DIY: Okra Santa Ornament

Santa face close-up

By Kathy Jentz

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These cute Santa ornaments are a fun holiday decor item or gift. Your Santa design and style may vary from ours pictured here. The shape of the okra can really add character to the finished face, so play around with that. You could add metallic accents and glitter as you wish. You can also paint the dried okra as various other figures like angels, snowmen, ghosts, etc. for other occasions.

Materials:

Dried okra pods
Acrylic paints in assorted colors
Foam paint brushes
Black marker
Small nail
Floral wire

unpainted okra pods and red-painted ones

Steps:

• Grow okra. Harvest and let it dry for several months. 
• Paint all of it red. Set aside to dry.
• Paint a face area. (I had to mix white, light pink, and yellow together to created a satisfying flesh-colored paint.)
• Paint white eyebrows, mustache, beard, and tip of his hat.
• Use a black marker to dot the eyes.
• Dot on a maroon mouth and pink cheeks.
• Push a nail into the "hat" then remove it and thread a thin piece of floral wire through the holes and twist the ends together to form the hanger.  



how to create the hanger

• Hang on your Christmas tree or use for a decorative gift tag.

This is a monthly blog series on DIY projects for the beginning home gardener. Look for the other installments in this DIY blog series by putting "DIY" in the search box here at washingtongardener.blogspot.com. 

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