Sock Snowfolk Craft

Here's a fun & inexpensive craft project I found on family.fun.go.com. I only wish I'd found them before Christmas; I think they would make a cute gift idea for the kids to work on. These would also be great for girl scouts, school, or a home art project, and it's sure to be great fun for kids of all ages. And it would be a cute craft to display on your shelf or coffee table in the winter time.

MATERIALS:
Beans (or rice)
Empty plastic container
Fleece
Rubber band
Pom-pom
Pipe cleaner
Button eyes
Buttons

Time: About 1 Hour

1. For each one, first pour 1/2 cup of dried beans or rice into a clean, empty plastic container, such as a single-serving milk bottle, a water bottle, or a plastic peanut jar (ours were about 7 to 10 inches tall).

2. Turn a white tube sock inside out and slide it over the bottle, starting at the bottom. Tuck the top of the sock inside the bottle, trimming it a bit first if necessary.

3. For a hat, cut a piece of colored fleece that's at least half as tall as the bottle and wide enough to wrap around it with at least 1 inch of overlap. Wrap the fleece around the top half of the bottle and secure it with a rubber band or elastic hair tie near the bottom of the fleece. Gather the material at the top of the hat and secure it with another rubber band or hair tie, as shown (far left).

4. To add a pom-pom to the hat, remove the fleece from the bottle, turn it inside out, then rubber-band it back in place and hot-glue a pom-pom to the top. Roll up the bottom edge of the hat or tuck it under for a brim.

5. Next, hot-glue on the snowman's features: a carrot nose (half an orange pipe cleaner coiled around the tip of a sharpened pencil to form a cone), small black button eyes, and colorful buttons down his front. Finally, tie on a strip of fleece for a scarf.