How to Paint a Wooden Thanksgiving Turkey Ornament

Turkeys have been the most popular Thanksgiving characters, with images used for decorations, dishes, balloons in parades, and floral arrangement containers. Wooden cutouts of turkeys can be affixed to skewers and placed in bouquets or plants for gifts. They can also be used for place setting card holders or a napkin ring embellishment at a sit-down meal. You can find all kinds of uses for the flat, wooden cutouts that you can paint using the instructions below.

Things You'll Need

• Wooden turkey cutout Sandpaper Craft paint for wood Paintbrushes Water container

Instructions

1. 

   Sand any rough edges from the wooden cutout. You can use an emery board for an alternative to sand paper if needed.

2. 

   Place the turkey cutout on a work surface. Draw an outline of the head, wing feathers, and feet with a soft lead pencil. Squirt small amounts of paint on a palette. You can use a coated paper plate or foam fruit tray for a palette if needed.

3. 

   Fill in the wings with a golden brown color using the paintbrush and paint. Fill the end of the brush with a burnt umber, and paint wet on wet to outline the outsides of the feather portions. The colors will blend automatically and shade in the curves of each segment of the wings.

4. 

   Use a fine-point brush to paint in the details of the turkey. Use yellow paint to highlight the feet and beak. Paint the wattle with the red paint.

5. 

   Dip a No. 1 or 2 brush in black paint. Fill in the eyes with one dot each of the wet paint. Outline the entire turkey in long and short dashes of black paint. Put a tiny dot of white paint on the black eyes to give that sparkle to them. When thoroughly dry, attach hanger, skewer, napkin ring, or wooden base to complete your choice of project.

Tips & Warnings

• This project is child friendly. Outline the image with pencil and set up the work area for a child to paint the turkey with bright colors.