• Your uncarved Halloween pumpkin with the unpainted side facing the street
• 1 piece of 12 x 12 pine shelving or enough scraps to make up for it (You could    use foamcore board for an interior one but I like wood best.)
• light or medium wood stain (I used water-based stain because I was teaching a group  in a small room)
• 6  (or more) 1/8" Bamboo skewers
• foam brush
• small brush for details
• fine black marker
• Craft Paint in the following colors:  black, white, gold, dark blue, Meduim blue or grey, burgundy, burnt umber, and dark green.

Head: rub pencil over the back of the turkey face pattern (or use wax-free carbon paper).  Turn the pattern right side up and trace the features onto the best side of the head.  Stain  all sides of the head below the hat.  Let dry.  (Paint some feathers while the stain is drying.)
 Paint the hat black.  Make white dots for eyes, let dry <---this is very important.  Paint beard burgundy red. Paint beak gold. Let dry.  (Paint more feathers.)
 Use and extra fine Sharpie marker to paint mouth and eyes.  Use medium blue or gray for hatband.  Make a buckle using the gold paint.  Let dry and varnish lightly.

Feathers: Use foam brushes to paint a very light but even coat of one color on each feather.  The feather colors are:  kings gold, midnight blue, burgundy, burnt umber and woodland green.  Insert the bamboo skewer and stand feather in a block of styrofoam until the feather is dry.  When the paint is dry, if you plan to use this outside, put on one light coat of exterior varnish and set to dry.  Actually, I use Deft Water based varnish for almost all my projects.)

Use a nail to start holes in your pumpkin or squash.  The skewers do break sometimes.  For this reason. I do not recommend gluing them into the turkey "feathers".
 

Enjoy!

 Jac

Turkey Pattern-Click here

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