Pinspiration: Once there was a Snowman

Thanks everyone who has welcomed me back so warmly to the blogosphere.  I was a little worried and I still am, but right now I'm just going with it.  Last night I laid awake for hours because I could not turn my mind off from all the things I have inside that I want to write about.  But first off, I have a craft project to share with you.  Now it's a little early for Christmas decorations at most of your homes.  But I have found if I want to make a Christmas decoration, early November is the perfect time!

My fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrator Mickey Roberts tagged me in a photo on Facebook a few weeks back.  It was a Deco Mesh Snowman head that was oh so cute!  I'd post it here, but that photo had no attribution and I'm always leery of posting something when I don't know it's origin and who to give credit to.  I had seen these before on Pinterest, several of them in fact, and at first I thought hey, that's cute but I'm not going to make one.  Then I saw some that were more than just the snowman's head, and included his body too.  Now I wanted one for my front door for sure!

So this weekend, I did:

How fun is that?!?!   I had originally envisioned him having three circle parts, but once I got the head done and realized how big he was going to be, I decided to just make one circle for the body instead of two.   Do you want to make one for yourself?  I have a few tips:

• First, you'll need some stuff: I used one 12" and one 18" boxed wreath forms (those are the wire frames that you find in the floral supply department), three rolls of white 21" Deco Mesh, a package of white chenille stems (just a fancy name for pipe cleaners), a fun foam top hat, a yard of ribbon for the scarf, and another 18" or so of ribbon and a pick to decorate the hat.  
• For the face and buttons, I happened to already have these wood pieces that I believe came from Wood Connection in Midvale, Utah.  We made them at a Super Saturday in my old ward several years ago.  (Actually, my extremely talented friend Jen made these so we could have a sample for Super Saturday and I ended up with them after the event.)  They are suppose to be used when you make a real snowman but mine never made it that far. 
• Find a tutorial on how to make a Deco Mesh wreath.  The internet is lousy with them so you don't need me to make another one.  I've seen these snowmen made with the ruffle technique and the roll technique (are those even the real terms?) but I would suggest you use the 10" Deco Mesh if you are going to use one of those techniques.  I could not find that length this year, so I just attached the mesh to the wreath form with a stem and then bunched it before attaching it to the form again.  That might not make sense now, but it will when you see a tutorial.  
• The difference between this and a regular wreath is that you need to fill in the middle too.  So I took some stems and strung them across the frame so I would have something to attach the mesh too.  Here's a picture of the back so you can get an idea what I mean (Poor little snowman, all face planted on my tile):
  
• There are all kinds of different snowman hats available at the craft stores.  I picked this foam one up at Hobby Lobby in the Christmas craft section.  One of the nice things about Fun Foam is it's very lightweight and it's easy to poke holes through it to attach the pick and another stem so you can attach it in the back like this:
  
• And yes, there was a long discussion in our house about the pipe.  I didn't originally put it on there, but the savages came behind me and added it so I left it.  

So what do you think?  Do you want to see more Christmas decor projects?  And yes, I do take custom orders. I'm not entirely sure how I would ship this one but I'm willing to check into it if someone really wanted something like this for her front door. 

(And for the record, I only had this on my front door long enough to take a picture. While I might start putting a few Christmas things up in my house before Thanksgiving, I will not be changing out my fall decor on my front porch until after.)