Reindeer topper tutorial

Good morning on this Thanksgiving Eve! I imagine, like me, many of you will be baking pies and doing lots of pre-prep for tomorrow's big dinner. Hubs asked for a very non-traditional pie this year, so in addition to pumpkin, I'll also be making banana cream. Yum. :)

My project today is this adorable treat topper. I love making punch art projects and this one was really fun. I've provided a pictorial for you so that you can make them too. Pinterest inspired, this is what I came up with for my reindeer! He's so cute I can't stand it! I know the grands will love him.

I used dies, as you can see, but dies are not required. You can use punches if you have them, or any cricut cartridge that has an oval and a branch or leaf cluster. The largest size will be the head--mine is 2 inches-- and decreasing sizes for the remaining parts in proportionate sizes - of course this all depends how big you want your finished reindeer.

Now choose a style for your antlers. You can go fancy, like this My Favorite Things flourish; chunky like the leaves by Paper Trey Ink, or pokey like the Spellbinders die on the right. I chose chunky for mine.

For the ears and hooves, cut the smallest two ovals in half.

Cut by hand if you like, or as I did, use the "ears oval" to cut the hooves....

....and by hand trim off a portion of the smallest oval halves to make the ear shapes.

Now you have all your pieces ready to put together! Ink if you like, and add your handwork at this point, i.e. eyes, face, ear markings, and any other features you wish to include. If you prefer, you can also use stamps - I highly recommend Peachy Keen Stamps for their super adorable faces assortments if you aren't comfortable drawing your own.

For the base, I used My Creative Time's tri-fold card, trimming off the extra after folding over the treat bag so I knew how big I needed it and scoring where I wanted the fold. Use any banner or cut a paper strip by hand and stamp your sentiment - I used My Creative Time's All Around Goodies and the alphabets from Just Simply Live to create my sentiment - then add the hooves to each side as if he is holding the sign. Adorbs!!!

I hope you'll try this super cute project. It takes only a few minutes to put together. Thanks for coming by today. Now I'm off to bake those pies! Yum. ♥