Tube Tom Turkey

Recently, I saw the idea of making a turkey from an empty toilet paper tube.

It seems that I have always have a flock of empty tubes lurking in my craft box. There’s just something that always says to me “save me” when all of the paper is gone. (Must be the spirit of cheap crafts that moves me to save them!)

I can do make a tube turkey with my granddaughter, I said to myself.

So I packed up all of the necessary items and trundled off to my granddaughter’s home.

To make the turkey’s tail feathers, she traced her handprint on three different colors of construction paper.

Then, we cut them out and taped them onto the tube.

We used a hot glue gun to glue on goodly eyes. She drew a beak on the turkey’s face.

Ta da! The turkey is finished.

One would think that this is a relatively easy craft to make, now wouldn’t one? Well, lemme tell you a couple of things that I learned.

First, don’t trace around the thumb — unless you hold your thumb really close to the other fingers.

If your thumb sticks out, you’ll end up with a turkey feather that sticks way out into left field and looks like you need to slather it with Dippity Do to keep it into place. (Remember Dippity Do? Today’s trendy young people call the stuff hair gel….)

Second thing. When you cut the hand out, cut it really narrow at the wrist. Like about an inch wide. Otherwise, when you tape the feathers to the tube the wide part will stick out weird. If you tape it down to the tube, the feathers will wrap around the tube and that looks weird, too.

Regardless, my granddaughter thought her turkey was magnificent. And it was — because she made it with me!

Here’s a picture of a tube turkey sans thumb and with the “tail feathers” cut narrow at the wrist.

If you need any empty toilet paper tubes, let me know. My little craft area overfloweth with toilet paper tubes!