New Year Remodel Coming Soon!

I had a little time off over the Christmas Holiday and when I had spare moments I used them to do a bit of reading on XHTML and CSS. My plan is that by the end of March I can create a new look for justbuildstuff.com. One of the books that helped me learn the most was Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML, I like the learning style of the Head First books and I definitely recommend reading this one especially to beginners. Now, the real test for me and the book is whether or not I can build a better looking website by the end of March. Only time will tell.

Learn to Carve Wood

One of the coolest gifts I received for Christmas this year was a misshapen lump of wood, a profiled lump of basswood to be more precise. What, you may ask would I do with this lump of wood? Carve it into an overweight man wearing a hat of course. I have never carved before and this is going to be my chance to learn. The wood came with a book about carving called Art & Technique of Scandinavian Style Woodcarving. As soon as I finish the carving project I will post some pictures.

Fleece Blankets Too!

The previous posting was about making a fleece pillow with a snowman theme, this posting is just to display a fleece blanket that my sister made for my daughter. It turned out great, and it is a much more sentimental gift when you know how much time and effort went into making it.

Make a Turkey from Felt and a Clay Pot

The next few posts on justbuildstuff.com are going to be about building the turkey shown in the picture below from some simple materials found at any craft store.

To get started making the turkey you need the following tools.

• Hot Glue Gun
• Scissors

And the following craft supplies.

• 3″ Clay Pot
• Assorted Sheet Felt (we used yellow, orange, brown, lt brown, black, white & green)
• 2″ Diameter Wooden Ball
• Glue On Eyes (optional)

To get started we cut the tail out of felt. First cut a brown piece as large as the entire tail and then individual feathers of the other colors. You can use the picture below as a pattern for cutting the tail and feathers, it may need to be scaled in order to be sized correctly, our tail is approximately 4.5 inches wide at the widest point.

The first thing we cut out was the base for the tail. As shown in the picture below, we just laid the pattern over the felt sheet and cut around it. Do not worry about the precision of your cuts, you can clean the pieces up after you make the initial cut.

Next cut out the feathers, from multiple colors of felt. Test lay the feathers on the tail base, and when you are satisfied with the pattern of the tail feathers glue them onto the base with a hot glue gun.

Cut the large part of the wing from the dark brown felt and the wing tip from a light brown felt, attach the wing tip with a drop of hot glue.

The feet can be cut out next. Aafter all the felt pieces are cut out they can be glued to the 3 inch clay pot as shown in the picture below.

This is the part of the project where we will create our turkey’s head. If you missed the Introduction or Part One- Cutting the Felt go back and check them out.

The first thing to add to the head is the beak cut from orange felt and hot glued in the center of the 2″ Diameter Wooden Ball, after the beak is added and the glue is cool add a drop of glue to the top of the beak and attach the turkey’s wattle over the top of the beak. Next either draw on eyes with a black permanent marker or add Glue On Eyes and place them where they look appropriate above the beak. Check your progress with the photo below.

The only tasks remaining to finish this project are to glue on the head and add the turkey’s Pilgrim Hat.

Gluing on the head is simple, we just used hot glue and offset it towards the front of the pot as shown in the photo below.

The final part of the project is to make the turkey’s hat. The hat is made by taking the cardboard roll from a used up roll of toilet paper. Cut the cardboard to approximately 2 inches in length an wrap black felt around it. No cut a felt circle the same diameter as the cardboard roll with some tabs overhanging the outside of the circle. Glue this to the top of the hat by placing a drop of hot glue on each of the tabs and placing them inside the cardboard tube.  Accent the the hat with a white felt stripe and a gold felt buckle and the turkey if finished and ready for a thanksgiving feast.

November Time!

Today is the start of November, the year is almost over, Thanksgiving is almost upon us and Christmas is quickly approaching. That means that it is time to flex our creative muscles and build some interesting stuff!


During November www.justbuildstuff.com will be posting some fun crafty ideas for the Thanksgiving holiday and we will be posting some simple and easy to build toy ideas that will make great Christmas gifts. Everything is more fun when you just build stuff.

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