Crafting - The Butcher's Daughter

DIY, Crafting, DIY & Craft, Seasons, Winter

Giant Nutcracker

October 11, 2023February 17, 2026by shannonleger

During the pandemic when I was looking for lots of fun and different projects to keep me occupied, I came across an amazing giant nutcracker pattern, a 6 1/2 foot tall nutcracker to be exact! I decided to give it a try and make a few changes to make it my own. I loved the outcome and he’s still one of my absolute favourite Christmas decorations. This is one of those things that really wows people whether you decide to put it outside or use it as part of your interior holiday decor. If using outside, I’d definitely recommend spraying the whole thing with a clear outdoor sealer to protect from the elements. I’d also only put it outside in a sheltered area like a covered front porch that doesn’t get a lot of wind, snow/rain. If you plan to place it outdoors, I’d also recommend laminating the face pieces. I used printer paper which would definitely not stand up to the elements. This project can be completed with a very small budget, especially if you have some of the materials laying around the house like I did. I already had a piece of Sonotube and the PVC pipes from previous home improvement projects. Most of the remaining supplies were purchased at Dollarama. If you are located in western Canada or the USA, you’ll be able to find similar items at Dollar Tree or Dollar General. Great Canadian Dollar Store has lots of really nice craft items as well but I do find them to be a little higher priced.

To create your giant nutcracker you will need:

4 foot concrete form – 12 inch diameter
12 inch round of plywood for the bottom of his body
14 inch round of plywood for the base
4 – 6 inch pieces of 2×4 lumber
8 foot piece of 4 inch diameter white PVC pipe (from this you will cut 2-28 inch pieces for his arms and 2-30 inch pieces for his legs)
2 PVC pipe end caps for his epaulettes
2 – 5 inch diameter styrofoam balls
Craft paint (I used flesh, red, black and grey)
Medium soft bristled paint brushes
Screws (sheet metal)
Roll of white fur
Black felt
Black plastic magnetic locker organizers for the foot part of his boots
Various tassels, trims, jute rope, etc. according to your taste to decorate the nutcracker
Hot glue gun and glue
Paper, printer and scissors to print and cut out face pieces
Mod Podge to glue face on
Blush to create his rosy cheeks
Rubber door stopper for nose
Clear spray sealer

Directions:

Cut out 14 inch plywood round and paint black. Screw on two 6 inch pieces of 2×4 as shown in picture. Turn right side up so 2×4’s are facing upwards. Slide legs (plumbing pipes) on to 2×4’s.
Cut out 12 inch plywood round and screw on two 6 inch pieces of 2×4 as shown in picture. Screw or glue the wood round inside the bottom of the concrete form (body) with 2×4’s facing downwards.
Slide the body piece onto the legs.

Halfway down the body, screw on the arms. Place end caps on the shoulders for epaulettes and glue in place if necessary. They may be tight enough to stay firmly in place without glue. You should be able to reach down in the top of his head to do this step.
Paint the legs black and grey (I did the bottom half black for his boots and the top half grey for his pants), paint the arms and the bottom half of the body red and paint the upper half black and flesh (so you end up with the top 1/4 of the body black, the middle 1/4 flesh and the bottom half of body red). You will need several coats of each colour. Let dry thoroughly between coats.
Paint the styrofoam balls flesh colour. Once dry, hot glue them onto the ends of the arms. Glue black felt strips where the grey and black paint meet. This creates his boot cuffs.
Print face from template and cut out. Attach with Mod Podge. Paint door stopper flesh tone and glue to face as shown in picture. Apply blush with a makeup brush.
Cut out a narrow strip of white fur and glue onto face for beard. Glue on a wider strip of fur around back of head and sides for hair. Glue on remaining embellishments of choice using picture as a guide to decorate his hat and jacket. Glue on magnetic locker organizers to finish off his boots. Spray entire nutcracker with a clear sealer if desired.

Crafting, DIY, Winter

Christmas Tree Flocking Hack!

January 5, 2022January 5, 2022by shannonleger

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again! Hard to believe it but it’’s December 1st and Santa will be here in a few short weeks. This year I decided to change things up a little with my Christmas decor. One thing I’ve been wanting to do for a year or more now is purchase a flocked tree or make my own. Seems it’s all the rage again this year.

I’ve looked around at trees but they’re pretty expensive and I already have a perfectly good little artificial tree that’s the perfect size for my entryway which is where I’d been wanting to put a tree now for a few years. I decided I didn’’t want to make the investment so on to Plan B! I decided I’d flock the tree myself with flocking powder or spray. Well, I ran into roadblocks right away even on Amazon. Seems there’s not much available that ships to Canada and the prices are crazy for what you get. So another idea down the tubes.

Plan C! I went looking around in my basement to see what we might have hanging around that I could use to transform my little tree. First glance around, nada. But then I spotted an old can of white enamel spray paint. Aha! Just the thing I needed to faux flock my tree! I took the tree outside and sprayed it from the top down, on the tops of the boughs towards the ends of the branches, just like where you’d see real snow fall. I’m absolutely in love with the end result! I ended up going with a woodland theme which looks perfect in my Farmhouse style home. Best thing of all, I didn’t have to spend a cent!

A little paint really transformed my little artificial tree. I made the burlap garland by sewing a straight stitch down the middle of an unrolled roll of burlap and pulling it to create a ruffled look. I purchased the burlap roll at Dollarama. I added the branches throughout to give texture and really bring home that woodland feeling. Branches are from my backyard.

I’ve since added more red and white balls and it looks even more amazing! Whole tree decorated for under $100 using mostly Dollarama decorations. They’ve really upped their decor game inn the past couple years! I’ve seen very similar Christmas balls at Canadian Tire this year for three times the price.

Crafting, DIY

Farmhouse Kitchen Hand Towel How-To

June 7, 2021by shannonleger

Hope you are all staying cool! Here in Eastern Canada we are having a bit of a heatwave. Today is feeling like 43 degrees Celsius with the humidex. Crazy times we are living in for sure! I never remember early June being this hot! It’s nice though to have summer come a bit early. I’m good with it as long as my A/C holds out, haha! Tonight’s supper will most definitely be BBQ something. Burgers I think….I’m excited to try a new green sauce on them. My Epicure order just arrived and one of my items was their new Feisty Green Sauce. It sure smells good, I’ll let you know how it tastes!

Since I’m mostly stuck inside today due to the heat, I thought I’d whip up some new Farmhouse style kitchen hand towels with a few basic items I purchased. I have looked and looked for just the right kitchen towels for so long and haven’t had a whole lot of luck! They are either too cheap looking, too much crochet on them, too expensive or just not my style/colour. I don’t go to craft shows anymore due to the whole pandemic situation so I often simply can’t find them. But like I said, they never seem just right for me when I do. DIY is the best option I think if you are wanting a specific style or colour. These were so easy to do and all I needed was kitchen tea towels and coordinating potholders. Oh, and a few buttons!

Find the center of a tea towel by folding in half. Mark it and unfold, On the wrong side, stitch a running stitch across from one side to the other. Gather by gently pulling your running stitch. Before tying it off, size it up based on the width of the potholder you will be using for the topper. (My stitching doesn’t look centred in the photo but it is!)

Find the center of your potholder and with right sides together stitch to your gathered tea towel making sure the potholder is centred on the gathered fold of the tea towel.

Fold up potholder in half and attach a coordinating button to the top of one side. You will use the hanger that’s on the potholder to “button” it and join the two sides of the kitchen hand towel around the handle off your stove, dishwasher, etc. Very easy, kitchen appropriate, and oh so cute! Oh, and it fits a multitude of handle widths!

The options are endless! They remind me of little dresses. I love them!

I decided to try a more tailored version as well. For these ones, I folded the tea towels in thirds lengthwise….the way they’d be folded normally when you purchase them.

I folded the towels in thirds but to a width that looked nice with the width of the pot holders I was using. With right sides together as shown, I machine stitched through the center (where the towel would fold over when hung)

I folded the potholder in half, added a coordinating button and voila! Ready to hang and gorgeous! A fantastic addition to any kitchen!

Aren’t they pretty? I’m so excited to finally have pretty (and large) kitchen hand towels that aren’t tattered and stained! Hope you will try this out for yourself! If not, I’ll be selling a few so you can message me here or through The Butchers Daughter FB page. Love to hear from you!

Crafting, DIY

DIY Greeting Card Books

March 4, 2021by shannonlegerLeave a Comment

During the early part of the Pandemic, many of us took on home renovation projects, took up a new hobby or revisited an old one, organized our homes, and a plethora of other things we’d put off doing previously. One of the early DIY’s I did was to organize my many special greeting cards I’d accumulated over the years.

I’m not a hoarder I promise! I do collect certain things though. Being a pretty sentimental person, I tend to find it difficult to let go of greeting cards that special people have given me to mark special occasions in my life. I’ve sworn more times than I can count that I was going to throw them out but could never bring myself to do just that. So I set out to find a creative way to organize them that would cost next to nothing and allow my family and I to enjoy them when we are feeling nostalgic. Here’s what I came up with:

1. I saved all the corrugated cardboard we were bringing into the house (Hello, Amazon boxes, haha!).

2. I went through my big box of cards and divided them into categories. Ex. Wedding, Baby Shower for each child, Christmas (I just kept particularly special ones), Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Birthday, Sympathy.

3. Once I had groupings I ordered them with the largest cards in the back of the pile. I based my “cover” size on the largest sized card in the group. I then measured, marked and cut out pieces of the corrugated cardboard.

4. I punched holes in the covers using a large three hole punch, it’s preferable if you can center the holes along the edge of your cardboard pieces instead of being too close to either the top or bottom of the cover. You will likely only use 2 of the 3 holes that the hole punch can cut due to the sizing of most greeting cards.

5. Line up your cards with the newly punched covers to decide where to place the holes so that the cards will align with your front and back covers as neatly as possible. I marked with a pencil so I’d know exactly where to cut when I got each card into the punch. You will likely have to do each card separately due to the thickness of the card stock.

6. Decorate your covers. You can do just the front cover or front and back covers. You can even do inside the covers. It’s up to you and how creative you want to get and how much time you want to spend. I liked the “kraft paper brown” colour of the cardboard so I left it mostly naked and used stick on letters, patterned papers, gel markers and various other little scrapbooking decorations to decorate my covers. I kept it basic and did only the front covers on one side.

7. I then attached the covers to the groupings of cards using binder rings. I used two different sizes. In the pictures attached you will see one package says Shower Curtain Rings. I had a hard time finding the larger sized rings when I ran out mid way through the project and found these at Dollarama for $2 per package. Great find and they are EXACTLY the same as the more expensive binder rings you’d find at an office supply store.

Note: If you have other little mementos you’d like to add to your card books but they are too small to punch or you don’t want to punch a hole in them, you can put them in a pretty envelope and punch the envelope instead. You can then easily add to your card book and keep everything organized with the grouping it belongs with.

When I had the books completed, I placed them in a pretty keepsake box to protect them. The box can then be stored or put out on display in a living area where you can take a peek whenever you’re feeling a little sentimental or want to share with friends or family.