make it: thanksgiving place cards

As a family we make Place Cards for our Thanksgiving table each year. Part of the fun of setting the table that day includes laying out the fun place cards we come up with each year. This year I had the idea to use one part nature, one part craft to form a little turkey for our table! We used the leaf for the wings and a simple triangle for the body of our gobbling little friend and with a few dabs of glue we were finished. On the bottom of each little bird we wrote the names of everyone in our family.

You can easily construct this little Gobbler for your table too! Here’s How:

You Will Need:

Pressed Fall Leaves (Collected from the yard, they will need to be pressed for 2-3 days)
Card stock paper (or you can use the back of index cards)
Hole Puncher
Ink Pen
Markers
School Glue

Step 1
Collect leaves from outside and bring them inside. Press them inside 2 sheets of paper, inside a book with heavy books stacked on top for 2 to 3 days.

Step 2
Once your leaves are pressed flat you can begin constructing your place cards. Cut triangle shapes from your white card stock paper and punch some holes from the same card stock paper with your hole puncher. Set aside.

Step 3
You can draw the face of your Turkey before or after you glue it on, but after making a few of these we found it was easiest to draw the face before we glued it on. The face is a simple triangle for the beak and a tear drop shape for the gobbler. Using the school glue, glue your triangle on the leaf.

Step 4
Next draw dots with a marker in the center of each of the hole-punched dots. Glue them onto the face of the turkey for eyes. Write a name on the bottom and you are done!

Step 5
Tuck the stem of the leaf into a simple ribbon tied around your napkin and your table is now ready for Thanksgiving Day action!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Author Description

caroline

Meet Caroline Urdaneta. She's a designer of creative family projects, crafter, tinkering painter, and mother of 4 children. Catch her work at Salsa Pie, which was started in 2009 to help foster an innovative spirit in her children. She writes about project ideas for the whole family and how to encourage creativity in kids.