Winter Crafts: Soda Bottle Polar Bear

There are lots of crafts you can make to celebrate winter. One craft is a soda bottle polar bear. You can easily turn an empty soda bottle into a polar bear by painting it and adding a few craft items. To see what your polar bear can look like when you are done, click here.

Start this craft by painting a clean 2 liter soda bottle white (remove any labels). You can use any acrylic paint. If you want the paint to stick on really well, you can give the bottle one coat of gesso first, then let dry. You can buy gesso in any craft store or in Walmart.

If you want to paint the bottle quickly, you can use white spray paint. Just be sure you spray outside. Or, you can make a painting booth by putting the bottle in a large cardboard box that you stand on its side. Spray the bottle while aiming in the box.

When the bottle is dry, add something to the bottle to weigh it down. You can pour in some rice, dry beans, sand, pebbles, or whatever you want. Just add enough grain to cover about 2 inches of the bottom of the bottle. If the bottle will be standing on a porch, you may want to fill it so it's very heavy and will not blow over in the wind.

Draw on a face using a black marker or black paint. You can draw any face you want, or you can use this free template. Add some pink for the cheeks. Cut mittens (also included on the template) and glue them as positioned in the image. You can cut the mittens from felt or any scrap fabric.

To make the little hat, cut a rectangle and fringe one side. Glue the fabric around the top of the bottle. You can also add ribbons or bows. For a boy polar bear, you could craft a top hat using black felt.

If you want to make a family of polar bears, you can use different size soda bottles. You can also make very little polar bears using empty baby food jars. They will be shorter and more stubby, but still very cute.

In fact, little baby food jar polar bears would make nice place cards for a holiday dinner party. Make one for each place setting and tie a tag to each jar. Write your guest names on the tags so they know where to sit. Then let your guests take the craft home as a party favor.

Source: kaboose.com