by P Vandegrift

Created on: November 01, 2009

There is so much excitement around decorating for the holidays that it is easy to get carried away with spending a lot of money on each 'theme'. Because of financial obstacles, we often find our imagination gets a bit stagnated. How you can create an inexpensive tablescape for Thanksgiving is to use the endless source of decorating objects that you can find right outside and some you might already have 'in house'. A handmade centerpiece can be more of a talking point than telling your guests you bought it at the store.

Everyone associates a turkey with Thanksgiving. How about making a quirky paper mache turkey?

Paper mache can be very messy but that is the fun part of crafts. This is a great way to use up those newspapers that have been sitting around. The mixture for paper mache is flour, water, and if you want you can add a bit of ordinary craft glue. Depending on the size you want your turkey to be, cup of flour and 2 cups of water should work fine or if you want a bit thicker paste, 1 cup of flour and 2 cups of water. When this is mixed until smooth and you are ready to use the paste, add a few tablespoons of glue to the mix.

Crumple up a few pages of the newspaper to make the 'body' of the turkey. Again, you can make it as large or as small as you want. When you have your ideal size, run a couple of strips of masking tape around the paper ball to hold it in place. Tear or cut the newspaper into 2-3 inch wide strips, they don't have to be perfect strips. Dip them in the paste and wrap them around the newspaper ball so that it is covered. Use a paint brush to smooth the paper down. Let it dry thoroughly.

To make the head, make a similar smaller ball of newspaper and wrap it with the mache. You will need a 'beak'. When wet, paper mache can be tweaked in places to add texture to the turkey. To make a beak, you would do this by loosely wrapping a strip of paper around what is to be the head, and while it is wet, pull a small section of the paper away from the rest and twist it around gently to make a small point. Or you can always make up your own version of a beak and glue it on with the other decorations.

Because you have used paper as the internal foundation, when it comes time to secure the head to the body, in the past I have used a good sized twig. This also serves to make the turkey neck - which you can tie a ribbon around afterwards to make a nice bow to dress up the turkey. Puncture the paper head and body with a knife, slide the twig or Popsicle stick

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