Fall Spool Craft: Vintage Thanksgiving Turkeys

After a busy Fall season so far, I’m so ready to celebrate the peacefulness of Thanksgiving! I love vintage images, and work with them frequently in my art. So I just had to come up with a fun way to display some of my favorite vintage Thanksgiving turkey images from Victorian postcards.  

This group of turkeys (A gaggle of turkeys? No, that would be geese!) is great on a mantel, and could easily work as favors or placecards for your Thanksgiving gathering. 

Let’s get started!

Spools:

I picked up a bunch of spools at the craft store, they are easy to find – just look in your store’s unfinished wood section. I tried something fun to paint them, and I love how it turned out. First I stained the spools (except the tops) using MinWax Gel Stain in red, and then I applied two coats of a red-and-gold glitter paint over the stain. I love the way the glitter paint seems to enhance the rustic and weathered look of the stain.

On the tops of each spool, I painted a coat of orange paint, followed on top with a coat of orange glitter paint. 

Images:

I used vintage turkey images from my own collection and found a few more at The Graphics Fairy – which is such a fantastic image source.  I put these turkeys together as a free printable for you to use!  

Aren’t they cute? I really love how unique each turkey is. And by grouping them together? Instant collection!

Just click on the image above to enlarge and then you can download it to your computer to print out as you wish.

I have a standard list of steps I do when using vintage images like these turkeys in my crafts:

• print out on a color printer, let dry a few minutes
• apply glitter glue to select areas to enhance image, let dry
• spray with acrylic sealer in either glossy or matte
• cut out images with small decoupage scissors
• outline the edges using a brown marker for definition

Putting it all together:

You can use twigs, toothpicks, thin wood skewers cut to size, just about anything that will easily fit inside the spools. I happened to have the perfect sticks on hand, which were formerly stems on some faux flowers from the craft store that I used in a different project. I had no idea what I’d use them for, but saved them just in case. 

I cut out 5 pieces of orange tulle – which you may remember from my Victorian-Style Halloween Boxes I shared here a few weeks ago – in small rectangles. Place the tulle over the spool, take your stick and push it gently down the center. The tulle will start to go “into” the center opening with the stick, leaving you with a pretty section sticking out from the center. I’ve used this idea before (when I made a Springtime spool craft) and I like how the tulle softens the look of the wooden spools and also helps to hold the sticks in place. 

A strip of natural-colored raffia, wrapped around the center and tied in a knot, finishes off each spool.

Using washi tape – although any type of tape will work fine – I simply adhered each turkey to one of the sticks, just eye-balling each one to make sure they all were of a similar height. 

Vintage Thanksgiving Turkey Spools:

 

 

Gobble! Gobble!

I’ll be back next week with another fun craft, but in the meantime you can visit me over at my blog, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+. (I’m everywhere!)

~Laura