Cardboard Christmas

My first task was to paint the Santa face with matte finish chalk paint. I then took a pipe cleaner and bent it into a figure shape with a neck, arms, torso and legs. Depending on the head size, the body is about 2 or 3 head lengths. In this case, with a larger size head I made the body 2 head lenths long. I the covered the neck, torso and legs with floral tape which I wrapped tightly on. The legs were painted with black acrylic paint. I glued the head to the neck and when it was securely attached I covered the body in tacky glue and folded over a piece of red wool roving, cut a tiny slit in the fold and slipped it over Santa’s head, attaching it to the glue on the body. I kind of squeezed the roving around the arms and torso and trimmed the extra as needed.

The next step was to tear off a tiny piece of white roving and attach it as a beard, trimming to shape it. I painted another piece of floral tape for the belt and glued it around Santa’s waist, shaping the roving as I went around. Trim off excess red roving at the bottom of Santa’s suit. The trickiest part for me was the hat. I rolled a thin piece of white roving into a rope shape and glued it along the edge of a small square of red roving which I then glued to the top of the head. (See pic of dutch like hat.) After it was thoroughly dry and attached, I started shaping the hat by pushing up on the back and pulling the white trim all the way around the back and gluing it in place. I then trimmed off the excess red roving from under the white trim. I hope this helps some - it was a lot of trial and error for me, as well a lot of gluing and shaping of the roving. I don’t think there is a standard or ‘right’ way to make the Santa.

Finished candy box Santa: I made shorter legs to match the Santa I was replicating, i have made longer legs too.