Nativity Scene

I kind of claim Sunday afternoons as craft time around here and today we decided to make a nativity scene. I have been wanting to buy one for the girls to play with but seriously, have yall seen how much nativity scenes cost?? I didn't want to pay much for one which pretty much left me with only one option... making one myself. Here is what we came up with.

 

 

We started by having my husband chop a dowel rod into different size pieces for our people & animals. I made all the people basically the same size, give or take a 1/2 inch or so for variety. Then I sanded down the edges to get them nice and smooth. Holding a crazy girl on your lap while doing this is optional. :)

 

 

I wanted to paint the heads a pretty neutral color so I just used white with a little bit of gold mixed in with it. You could also use brown or maybe even a little black if you didn't have gold.

 

 

I let the girls paint the tops of the pieces, which will end up being the neck/shoulder part of the person. It doesn't matter if the paint gets down further because you will be covering the rest up with felt later.

 

 

After the paint was dry, we added a dab of hot glue...

 

 

And attached a head. I got these balls at Wal-Mart in the craft section. It was a pack of 12 for around 1.50. This was the only thing I didn't have on hand so it was a pretty cheap project.

 

 

Then I let the girls paint the heads...

 

 

We cut out squares of felt big enough to wrap around each body. This one was for an angel so we used white but we used all kinds of colors for the other people.

 

 

I cut out a half circle and cut slits on the front half for the hair. I didn't worry about covering the whole head with hair since they had scarves put on top.

 

 

Here is a piece I cut out for a scarf...

 

 

I didn't take a picture of the wings but then you just hot glue all the pieces on and you have angel!! The other people we made very similar but just changed a few minor details... belts instead of wings, crowns instead of scarves, ect.

 

 

And that's a look at our "less then 5.00" nativity scene!!