DIY: Mini Wooden Deer Bust Trophy

 

Supplies:

• wooden animal model puzzle kit (preferably one with a thick neck)
• small wooden plaque
• paint or wood stain in whatever color you want
• glue
• sawtooth wall hanger
• exacto knife (use at your own risk)

I got everything at either Michael's or A.C.Moore craft stores.

- Start by painting or staining the wood plaque with a color of your liking, heck you can leave it raw if you want, it's all up to you.

- Next you want to attach the sawtooth wall hanger to the back of the plaque (don't skip this step and then try to do it later, you'll be pretty ticked when you smash your bust)

- Then it's time to put your model together, if you can put just the head and neck portion together that's great, but most likely you're going to end up assembling most of the little guy. Once together decide on where you want your trophy to start. My deer model had a little shoulder piece that made the perfect place to start from and mark it.

- Now this is wear it gets tricky. Once you know where you want to trophy to start from, disassemble your model and then you need to oh so carefully cut off your model's head with the exacto knife (again, any time you use an exacto knife it is at your own risk, please, please be careful and don't injure yourself). If you have a small craft saw, you can use that, I used what I had on hand, so an exacto knife it was.

- So you have the pieces of your model's head separated. Go ahead and glue those pieces together.

- Then once the glue has dried you can glue the bust to your plaque.

- And once that is dry, hang that puppy on the wall!

This was one of those make lemonade out of lemons kinda projects. It all started when I spotted the super cute wooden dinosaur model in Jen's dining room.

I had bought a few of those wooden puzzle model kits a while ago when I was going to be watching my nephews for a few hours. I had visions of being the cool aunt they did projects with. . . they wanted nothing to do with me and my crafting ways and spent the day watching movies.

So when I saw Jen's dinosaur I knew I had to break out those kits and get me a wooden animal model.  I put together the deer, it took forever (not really) and loved it. The legs were only connected in one place so I decided to add some glue to stable things up a bit. In the time it took me to go into my studio and grab the glue, Emmett used one of the legs as a chew toy. . .

So here I was having spent way too much time on this silly deer to let to just throw it away, and thus, the Mini Wooden Deer Bust Trophy was born!