Primitive Pilgrims

While I was working on my Beadboard Turkeys, I fell in love with their legs.  To me, it was just darling to have these substantial turkeys held up by spindly little legs.  Since I already have a turkey that goes with a set of pilgrims that I made a couple of years ago,  I associate turkeys with pilgrims for my Thanksgiving decor. So, I started playing around with the idea of spindly legged pilgrims to go along with my spindly legged beadboard turkeys.   This is what I came up with.

I love them.  They are fun and rustic looking.  And, since I was already going to be making the turkeys for Fabulous Friday, I decided to add the pilgrims as another craft available.
Wanna make your own?
Here is what I did:


I came up with my basic shape for the boy and the girl body that I traced onto 1/2in MDF.  I saw no point in cutting these guys out of real wood since I was going to be painting them anyway.  The mdf is cheaper and easier to cut!  The boy's hat brim, girl's bonnet and the collars, I cut out of 1/8in mdf.  Their design is loosely based off of these felt pilgrim stickers I used on my Thanksgiving banner last year.



After cutting the wood, I sanded all the edges and imperfections smooth with my belt sander. And yes, that is sawdust all over the place.  I really need to take the time to clean my shed...

After that, I drilled 2 holes in the bottoms of each pilgrim and small wooden rectangles that will serve as the base for each pilgrim.  Then I cut dowels to use as legs.  I inserted the dowels into the holes after first adding a drop of wood glue to the holes.


Next, I painted the bases, legs and bodies black and the faces flesh toned.


Next, I painted the girl's bonnet and the collars white.  It took about 3 coats to get complete coverage.


Then, take your wood glue and glue the bonnet, hat brim and collars to the pilgrim.  I know you might be tempted to grab your glue gun, but, use the wood glue.  Glue gun glue will hold right now, but the chances are high that the pieces will peel or fall off.  The wood glue creates a tighter bond between wood to wood.  In the long run, you will be much happier with the wood glue.



Now its time to paint the faces.   First I add the cheeks using a stippling brush.

Get a very small amount of paint on your brush.


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Get rid of almost all of the paint on the brush by making a stenciling motion on your palette or a scrap piece of paper.

When you think most of the paint is gone, that's when you stipple on the cheeks.  It's just a light brushing.  Nothing to dark.
Then, its time to make your eyes and the twinkle on the cheeks.

Dip the end of a paintbrush into the black paint.

Next, lightly touch the tip to the wood and pull up.  You should have a perfect little circle.  If you're nervous, its okay to practice a couple times on a piece of paper.  Just remember that you need to redip the tip into the paint every single time if you want your circles to match.
I repeated this step with white paint and a smaller paint brush to create the white cheek twinkles.

Finally, I am ready for the finishing touches.  I lightly sanded the edges for a distressed look.  Then, using a glue gun, I  added the bows and gold buttons.



And my pilgrim couple is complete!



What a cute, happy family!