Michaels Made These Crazy Cool Six Foot Tall Nutcrackers

My wife Donna saw a show on the Hallmark Channel about making a huge Christmas Nutcracker. She had some specific color ideas in mind so that when finished, it would match the decor in our living room. It took some time but wasn’t too difficult.

Materials You'll Need:
-12” cardboard concrete tube (4 feet long)
-4” PVC pipe (4 pieces 24” long)
-4” PVC end caps (2 pieces)
-2x4 (4 pieces 12” long)
-12” round pine panel
-15” round pine panel
-a box of 2 1/2” wood screws
-12” pizza pan
-5” styrofoam balls (2)
-white latex primer
-craft paints (peach, blue, black, red)
-white, tan, and dark brown fur from the fabric store
-various Dollar Store Christmas decorations for embellishments

Here’s the process:

The concrete tube makes up the body of the nutcracker. The hat is 12”; the face is 12”. The remaining 24” make up the shoulders to the bottom of the coat. Prime the concrete tube with white primer. When dry, paint the lower 24” of the tube the color of your choice (we used a dark gray that matched our living room walls).

Paint the arms, legs and PVC end caps. The end caps for the shoulders.
Prime and paint the 15” pine panel (this forms the base).

Using wood screws, attach two pieces of 2x4 to the base from the bottom up). Slide two PVC legs over the 2x4’s.

Attach two pieces of 2x4 to the bottom of the 12” pine panel. (These will slide down into the top of the leg PVC pieces). Attach the 12” pine panel to the bottom of the concrete tube.

To attach the arms and shoulders: I added a piece of scrap wood inside the concrete tube and drilled through it; exiting into the PVC cap and arm.

The face was made from this clip art:

I enlarged the mouth by 200% All the other features were enlarged by 250%
The nose was made from a scrap 3” wedge of pink insulation board painted peach color.
The cheeks have circular dabs of red chalk powder.

The top of his hat is made with a Dollar store pizza pan.

All the other embellishments came from the Dollar Store.