How to Carve a Wooden Snowman Holiday Ornament

A wooden snowman is a simple, easy to make woodcarving for the holiday season that can become an original holiday decoration or a unique and inexpensive holiday gift that will be appreciated. Here is how to make a wooden snowman.

Start out by locating a piece of dry wood, preferably either a 2x2 board or a dried out piece of fire wood that is two inches round and not split. The wood should be 6-8 inches long. A recently cut down sapling is another possible source of valuable wood. If the wood is not round, use your knife to carve away the corners of the wood until you have a wooden cylinder roughly 1.5-2 inches wide and 6-8 inches tall.

Draw a pencil line about an inch below the narrower end of the wooden cylinder, for the snowman's hat. (If the wooden cylinder is even at both ends, choose which end you want to use for the snowman's head.) Then draw a line at the midpoint from the hat line and the end of the wood. This will divide the bottom of the snowman from the middle of the snowman. Draw another line three fourths of an inch below the top line. This line will define where the snowman's neck will be carved. Visualize a balanced snowman and picture it along the lines. Do the lines need rewriting or are they good?

Here are a couple random tips that can help. The distance of the bottom ball should equal the combination of the middle ball and the head of the snowman. The hat should be between an inch and an inch and a quarter tall, depending on the snowman's height.

Using your knife, round off the bottom of the snowman. It is good to leave enough of a flat surface to allow the wooden snowman to stand if the mantelpiece effect should be desired. Then, remembering the location of the midline, carve out the top of the bottom ball and the bottom of the middle ball. It is helpful to carve this one side at a time so you can still have the guideline to rely on.

Repeat the same procedure for the neck, finishing the middle ball. Remember that the middle ball is smaller and therefore, narrower. This makes a necessity the need to carve from the surface of the wooden cylinder about a quarter of an inch all around to avoid having a "fat" disproportionate snowman.

Decide how wide you want the hat to be and then carve away the outside to create a narrow cylinder the width of the hat brim. The head and upper hat will be slightly smaller; now you can carve them out and you are done carving the snowman's body.

For the arms, select two twigs; preferably straight twigs that have forks at the end, or twigs that "bend at the elbow." Decide which angle the arms will point, then drill holes into the middle ball with the appropriate sized drill bit. The holes should be about a third of an inch deep. Whittle the arms if necessary to get them to fit, then put a dab of glue in the hole and insert the arms. For the nose, a twig can be procured and whittled into a wooden "carrot." This can be put on the snowman in the same way as the arms. Any painting of the arms and nose should be done before adding them onto the snowman.

The last step is to paint the snowman. Standard colors are black for the hat and white for the body. After the initial paint dries, you can add buttons, facial features, and any other details to the snowman. Use a thin strip of flannel rag or a piece of holiday ribbon for a scarf if so desired. For a holiday ornament, insert a hook or a small eye loop into the top of the snowman's hat and add string if needed. You now have a holiday ornament that you can hang on your Christmas tree. Or you can use the snowman as a freestanding holiday ornament for your table or mantel place during the holiday (or even non-holiday) season.