Thanksgiving Crafts: Pine Cone Turkeys

If you are looking for a cute party favor to give to your Thanksgiving dinner guests, you should try making some cute pine cone turkeys. These little turkeys can also act as place cards to help seat your dinner guests. All you have to do is write your guests' names on slips of paper, tuck the slip of paper into the pine cone, and place the turkeys by each plate.

To make this Thanksgiving craft, you will need one pine cone for each turkey you make. If you don't have access to pine cones, you can find them at any craft store. Try to get pine cones that are short and full, sort of round. You also want the pine cones to be fully open.

The other supplies you need for each turkey is one little brown or tan pom pom, two wiggle eyes, a scrap of yellow felt, a scrap of red felt, and some chenille sticks or pipe cleaners in fall colors like red, brown, green, and one yellow chenille stick. You will also need a hot glue gun.

You can see a photo of two little pine cone turkeys if you click here. Use the photo as a guide while making this project. You will notice those turkeys have fancy chenille sticks with little stripes on them, but plain chenille sticks will work just fine. You could even use narrow strips of construction paper to make the tail feathers.

Start by folding over the chenille strips to form loops, then add a bit of hot glue to the ends of the loops and tuck them into one end of a pine cone. Then glue the pom pom on the other end to make the head. Glue on the wiggle eyes. Cut a beak from yellow felt and a wattle from red felt and glue those on also, using the photo as a placement guide.

Then bend a yellow chenille stick into several points and tuck it into the front of the pine cone, below the head. This makes the feet and helps the turkey stand without rocking.

If using as a place card, write your guests' names on a piece of construction paper and tuck the paper into the pine cone. Alternately, you can make a little flag by gluing the slip of paper to a chenille stick or a tooth pick and then gluing the flag to the turkey.