A Cute Autumn Scarecrow Centerpiece

Finished centerpiece.

New readers may wonder why I am making an autumn centerpiece in January, but long time readers may remember that one of my goals for the year was to make a Halloween themed item each month.  Perhaps scarecrows are only marginally associated with Halloween, but at least it is in the season of late summer to autumn.  I started this piece in January, although I did not finish it until yesterday.  I was working on it during the time I was making the large head for my doll project.  I thought you might be interested in just how this project came about.  The instructions for making this project are fairly detailed, so it will take this blog post and the next one to explain how I made this project.   Once you see how the base is made, most crafters will be able to figure out how to finish the object on their own.

In 1994 I saw a similar centerpiece in a Crafts and Things magazine.  I kept the article because I thought that one day I might make this, and now 24 years later, I finally made something similar to it.  The centerpiece was really cute, but it was also really expensive to make it. Just to give you an idea of how much the original centerpiece would have cost, I went online to a national craft chain's website and priced out each piece.  It would have cost between $32.00 and $42.00 depending on whether or not you could find a 12 inch square (30.48 cm square) piece of burlap or whether you had to buy a whole yard of burlap.  (Many times online companies only sell fabrics by the yard.)  The cost is pretty expensive for a craft item that you may only use for one season.  It might last another year, but raffia tends to turn brown over time and become brittle.  This is not an heirloom craft, just something fun for the season.  I wanted to make something like it, but not something that was exactly like it.  I only really enjoy making things that I can make my own. 

Manufactured lid helped keep in bits of foam.

The cost of the centerpiece is not really out of line with what you might spend if you were to purchase a pre-made centerpiece.  However, when you think about it, if you were to purchase a seasonal arrangement four times a year you might be spending $120.00 dollars during the course of the year.  Over say ten years, that is about $1,200.00 dollars.  At my spending level, that would be the equivalent of a mortgage payment and a winter electricity bill.   That is a lot of money for something that is going to be thrown into the trash, or at best donated to a thrift store.   I try to find ways to keep expenses down by making things from recycled materials and found objects.

I kept the Crafts and Things article because "one of these days I'm going to make this."  It turns out that 2018 was to be the year for it.  It started because I am at the point of having to do a purge of all the odds and ends that have built up over time.  When I make a project, I frequently have little bits of this and that left over, because you can rarely buy an item in the exact quantity you want.  I hate to throw out the leftover pieces because sooner or later I am going to need another little bit of something for another project.  However, over time, those leftovers build up and my studio gets overcrowded and uncomfortable and some of this stuff has to go.  I decided that before I cleaned out the room that I would see just how much of the accumulated debris I could put to good use.

I wanted to try to make the centerpiece in a way that kept costs to a minimum.  My challenge to myself was to make this craft item using leftovers from other projects and to find ways to make or substitute items so that I would not as have many out of pocket expenses for the project.  I managed to cut the costs in a number of areas.  Yes, I still had to pay for the craft products used, but many of those costs had been absorbed in making other projects.  The only real out of pocket expense for this project was the $8.49 cents I spent on the artificial flowers that decorated the hat.  I probably could have made my own flowers from leftover materials, but it seemed like more effort than it was worth.

To start the project I needed a foam ball and block.  The original directions called for a five and a half inch (13.97 cm) diameter ball made out of floral foam and a four inch wide (10.16 cm)  block.  The floral foam is less expensive than Styrofoam,  but that was still a major expense for the project.  Other than the flowers, it was the most expensive part of the project. 

I sidestepped the foam ball by making a  ball out of re-purposed aluminum foil and covered it in paper mache'.  (Note: make sure your foil is not food contaminated.  I place my baked goods in plastic bags, then wrap them in foil before freezing.  The foil never comes in direct contact with food.  After the baked goods are used, there is plenty of clean foil for projects.). On this project, I learned that I don't need to crush the foil so tightly when making the ball.  It was so solid that I had to put some effort into pushing the dowel into the foil.  Once the paper mache' was dry I painted the ball with a coat of Gesso and some leftover straw colored paint.  The gesso was to cover the newsprint, and the color that matched the raffia helped to disguise any areas that might not be well covered by raffia.

The base for the piece is a four inch diameter (10.16 cm) clay flower pot.  The floral foam brick is glued into the pot using got glue and trimmed flush with the base.  I side stepped the floral foam brick by using some Styrofoam packing material that came in some package.  I will say that the Styrofoam was very messy to trim to size and there were little bits of the foam everywhere.  It was a mess to clean up.  At least I had the consolation of knowing that I was re-purposing a material that otherwise would have gone into the trash.  To keep further messy bits from escaping from the pot, I cut a circle with tabs from a recycled file folder.   (Trace around the pot and draw on your tabs then cut it out.)  Glue the re-purposed file folder to the bottom of the pot. I had some terra cotta colored paint from a previous project.  I gave the area two coats of paint.

Next came putting the pieces together.  I inserted one end of the dowel (leftover from another project) into the ball I had made from foil and paper mache', removed the dowel, added hot glue and re-inserted the dowel.   (I think the dowel was about eight inches long.) I flipped the pot upside down and inserted a dowel through the hole in the bottom of the pot, pushing it deep into the foam.  I withdrew the dowel, added hot glue, then replaced the dowel.  This created the base for the project.  The pot needs to be a clay pot because it needs the weight.  This pot was one I had hanging around for so long I cannot remember why I had it in the first place.  It had been sitting on my crafting table holding a bunch of gel pins. 

After that, it was a matter of hot gluing on some raffia.  Basically, I gathered up a bunch of raffia and tied it in half.  Then I glued it to the head.  I did three sections in this manner to have enough raffia to cover the head well.  Then I used a piece of raffia to tie the hair between the ball and the pot.  The raffia was really long, and once the entire ball had been covered, I trimmed the raffia so that it was even with the bottom of the base.  The raffia was a little stretchy, so while trimming I had to remember to give it just a little bit longer length than it actually looked like it should be.

I wanted my scarecrow to have some hair and be feminine.  I glued more bunches of tied raffia together to cover the head with hair.  Left straight, the raffia hair looked too shaggy.  At first I tried making it into braids, but one braid looked much thicker than the other, so I decided that pig tails were in order.  In the next blog post, you will see learn more about why this strategy worked well.

I added eyes and a mouth made from fabric I made a nose by tying bits of raffia.   . I will blog more about making the features in the next blog post.

Anyway, this is a good stopping point.  Many crafters can figure out where things go from here and go off in their own direction.  However, I do have some insights on the rest of the centerpiece that might be worth reading.  I digressed from the original directions by making a bonnet.  Making the hat was not easy.  I hope you will check back next Sunday afternoon for that blog post.