 Hi everybody, my name is Megan Viscio and welcome to my art class, where today we're going to be learning how to make we people. And when I thought about the title of this class, I thought about it for two different reasons. We, meaning small, spelled differently, and we people meaning we people really have to come together. And I think art is one of the ways that brings people together. So hopefully you had a chance to pick up your bag at the library with the supplies and let's begin the tutorial. Let's just go over some of the supplies you'll need to collect from around your house before we begin. You'll need a pencil, some scissors, tape is optional. It'll just help you out a little bit and some glue. And then you're going to need something to decorate your beads with. These are just some options. Color pencils work really well. Sharpie markers, because they're permanent, they work really great. If you have paint, you can use that or crayons. These are paint markers. I would stay away from like a crayola water-based marker just because over time they'll kind of rub off and they won't stay as well. So a permanent marker is better or just your colored pencils or your crayons. And here's a look at some of the things that I put together in your little paper bag that you picked up at the library. This kit is enough to make either two of the small little people or one person and a snowman. And I'll show you that in a little while. So in your kit you'll find a piece of felt, a hat template made out of paper, a little hat, some yarn, that'll be the hair, three white wood beads and then two beads, wood beads that are just natural, a wood dowel. Here's some scarves. And then in your little baggie you'll find some twine, plastic beads, that will be the feet. These little pearler beads will be used as a spacer, a pom-pom, two hooks and then two jump rings. Okay, so the first thing you want to do is just take your wooden dowel tool and just kind of make sure that your bead is all cleaned out. Sometimes there's little wood chips in there. That'll just make it easier to string later. So just go through, try to put the dowel all the way through to clean all your beads out. Now you may want to use, this is just kind of a natural wood color, but you might want to change the color because we all have different color skin. So you might want to customize your bead to fit the color of your skin. And I'm just going to give you a simple way that you can do that. If you have a little cup, a plastic cup, and you have a washable marker, you're just going to take it and color all inside the little cup. Just try to get as much as you can. And again, this won't work with Sharpie. It's just going to work with a water-based marker. And then you're just going to add a drop of water, just a little bit. And you're kind of making a stain, really watered down. Now you can also do this with a drop of, if you have paint at home, maybe have some acrylic paint, just a drop of paint added with a lot of water. You just want it to be nice and thin, kind of paint it right on your bead. And if you want to make it darker, I would just let this color, this layer, dry, and then I'd put on another one until you get it the color you want. Now the next thing you can do is you're just going to decorate your person. So this is going to be your head bead, the one that has no paint on it, the one that's painted white is going to be your body. And they all have a flat side. So think of that as your shoulders. So that's just going to rest along the head of your person like that. This pink right here, that's permanent Sharpie marker. This orange is colored pencil and this purple is crayon. So those are the different types of things you can use. I didn't do paint. This little person was done with those paint markers. Just take it to show you. This little dowel can also be used as a tool. I just like to put it on something so I have something to hold onto because it can be a little hard to decorate when you're just holding onto the bead. So now just take whatever you're drawing with and you can draw just a cute little face. And I'm just going to keep it really simple. Two eyes and a little smile. Now to make them look like they've been playing out in the snow, this is just a little trick that I use. This is some blush and I use this when I'm making my clay figurines out of polymer clay. But you can use it on these too. If you don't have blush at home, that's OK. All I do is take a little bit of the blush and I put it on the cheeks. You should use that pink color. You can use a q-tip and then it kind of gives them a little rosy cheeks, which looks cute. If you don't have that at home, you can also use some colored pencils. I'm going to make my mouth just a little bit more red so you can see it better. Now she has little rosy cheeks. She's been outside and all this snow sleigh riding or maybe caroling. OK, so I've got my head done. I'm going to take that off my dowel and set it aside. And now it is time to decorate our little body beads. And remember that flat edge is your shoulder, so keep that up at the top. Just go ahead and decorate your bead with some stripes. Maybe you want to do polka dots. However you want to decorate. Fill in the whole thing. If you want to get rid of all that white color at all in, make it look really nice. Here's some colored pencil, just kind of showing you what different things look like. So now that you've decorated your beads, it is time to put them together and assemble your little person. So the things you're going to need are some tape, is handy, scissors, yarn, your yarn, whatever color you choose, your beads, the contents of that small plastic baggie, and then your twine. The first thing you want to do is take whatever color yarn you want. And I just cut mine into some long lengths. Keep it long for now and then put that aside. And I mentioned that tape is handy in this. And that's the reason why is because if you tape the ends of your cord, it's going to be a lot easier to thread through the wood bead. And your cord's not going to fray as much. And it's really easy to do in any tape will work. All you do is take a little small piece of tape and you're just going to put your cord right on the edge. And very tightly just tape up the end. And if there's extra, which there probably will be, you just need a smidge. You don't want it to get too thick. Just cut off the extra and then you have the end of your cord, which is going to stay nice and stiff and be easy to thread. Once you've got that done, you are going to take your hook and a jump ring and you're just going to thread or clip on that hook right onto your jump ring. Then take that jump ring and slide it through one end of the cord. So this is what you have. Once you have that, you can start by putting on your head, starting by the top. Go down and then remember that flat side facing up. You're going to start threading in through that. Those are like the shoulders. If you did it upside down, it's okay. Just keep on going and then you're going to put on the body. Now that we've got our beads on, we're just going to move them down just a little bit to give us room to put this hair in. So all I'm going to do is there's a loop right here. Put my yarn right through that loop, about halfway between, and then move those beads right up. So just leave your hair like it is now. Like I said, we'll trim and I'll show you how to unwind it after. Once you've got that done, it's time to tie a knot right here to keep all this stuff on. Sometimes the hole in the bottom of this bead is a little too big. So if you tie a knot, the beads will slip right through. And that's why I gave you these little spacer beads in your kit. And hopefully these will help to keep that knot from pulling through. So just take one of your strands and thread on one of those beads. And it should, might be a little tight, but it should. The bead should kind of pop right in and that'll hold everything together. What you want to do is just make sure you're really pushed up to the top. So push up and then push that in and make sure it's everything's tight. If it's tight, your hair will be nice and tight. Then you're going to take your two pieces of cord and tie two knots, pulling tight each time. You can do two knots. If you want to do three, you can do three. So now your person is on there. Everything's secure. It's not going to come off. And this clip up here, like I said, should be really tight. Your hair shouldn't fall out. If it's falling out, your knot is not tight enough. Okay. So once I've got my knot there, it's time to put on my little shoes. And there's a lot of string right here. And that's good. You want to keep it really long. So what I want to do is down here at the end, I'm just going to cut my cord at a good angle without the tape on. We can try it without the tape at an angle. So it kind of goes in and just carefully, very gently push that through. Okay. And come on over to this one again, cut at an angle. If you push too hard, your cord is all going to spring up and it's going to be hard. Very gently just push it through. All right. So you've got your two shoes on. And now you want to decide how long our legs are going to be. So I like it about there. Now this is a little bit tricky, but you're going to want to tie a knot. Underneath that bead, that's your shoe to keep that on. So what I do is I tie a loose knot and then I kind of move my knot where I want it to be before pulling really hard. So I kind of just move it around. And then once I have it where I want it, I just go ahead and tighten it. And there's my two little feet. And then just trim off the excess. Okay. So say you want to make another little person without that little clip at the top. You just wanted to make just the person. It's not going to hang from everything. It's going to be the same kind of idea. You're going to have your cord. Instead of putting the hook and the jump ring on, you're just going to put your hair at the top, thread in through your head, and then the body, starting at the shoulders. Okay. And then again, you'll just put in your spacer bead. You're not. But see, now there's no clip up there. It's just a little person. Now that our little people are all together, we can work on the hair. And depending on what type of yarn you chose, there's different things you can do. You can leave the yarn as it is, and it sort of looks like braids. You can braid the yarn. If you want to unravel each strand, it takes a little time. But you can do that with your hands and then brush it out. And then you sort of have more of a long kind of softer hair. You can also trim it to whatever length you want at this point. Keep it long like that. Make it really short like this guy, however you would like to customize your person. And now we can add a scarf and a hat. Let's start with the scarves. So just choose whatever one you like the best. I think I'm going to go with this straight one. And this is pretty easy. All you're going to do is take your scarf and fold it in half and then put your little person right there. So you have a loop on this side and two ends on this side. And what we're going to do is take these two raw ends and go right through the middle of that loop. And then holding your person and pull those two ends. Now there's a little scarf on there. One little reminder, when you tie that knot there, make sure that spacer bead is really pushed up and that you have a really good knot and everything's tight. It'll just help everything stay together better. OK, so moving on to a little hat, you might want to just put a little bit of glue in there, either hot glue or something that you have at home. And then just place it right on the head. And then you have a little elf hat. You can also kind of glue that part down if you want it to look like it's falling down. You just put a little glue right there and then pinch it closed. That's if you have no hook up at the top. If you put a hook to make it like a zipper pull or an ornament, then you're just going to have to cut a small little slit in the back of your hat so that when you put it on the head, you can pull out that clip and that'll be exposed so that you can still hang it. And then again, just glue the hat right on your head as usual. Now I also wanted to show you how you could make your own really quick. So in your kit, I've included a hat template, a pattern and a piece of felt and a pom-pom. So what you want to do is cut out your pattern and then it's going to look like that. OK, it's going to be that shape. Take this pattern and how I got to this part, how I got this template, when I took one of these store-bought hats and I just cut it apart. I took out the seam and then I've got that shape. So then I traced that shape onto a piece of paper. That's how you make a basic pattern. So then what you're going to do is you're going to take your cutout template and a pencil will be fine and you just want to trace all around on a piece of felt. And now cut that out on the line and then you'll get something that looks like that. So what you're going to do is with your hot glue or your glue, you're going to run a thin layer right along the edge. OK, if you are not comfortable using a glue gun, please ask for help, OK? Because this is working right near the edge and it can get a little dangerous. Just seal up that edge. It's nice and neat. I didn't put a ton of glue so it's not all seeping out. Just put that aside to let it dry for a few minutes. So when it's dry, you're going to take your hat and you're going to turn it inside out. And I left that top sealed like that just because I thought it'd be easier to stick the pom-pom on. So now we've got our little hat and then I can just take my glue and put a little dot at the top and stick on my little pom-pom. OK, so there's a little hat now. You made your own and now you have the pattern to make more. If you want to trim it, make it just a little bit shorter. Just go like that. You have a hat. You can put another hat on the other person. I can secure this one down just to show you. So I just put a little glue in there, maybe a little dot at the front and then just kind of press it down, pulling it down onto her head. Felt stretches. So if this felt the hat doesn't seem big enough, just take your fingers and kind of stretch it and it'll stretch and get bigger. And then I'm going to make it tip to the side. So I'll just add a little glue right there and push it down and hold it in your bag. You can make two people and that's fine. Or you can make a person. You just have to use two head beads, the two wooden beads. Just decorate it the same you would with the body. It's not white, but it's fine. You can do that so you can make one person and then one snowman with your three white beads. You're going to put your hook onto your jump ring, thread the three white beads and then have your spacer bead through one of the legs. Pull it nice and tight. Tie two knots and then you can trim off the excess. If you want to decorate your little snowman, put the scarf on. Remember you fold the scarf in half. Put down your person. Take the two ends that are loose and feed them right through that loop. And there you have a little snowman. I think that's really cute too. And this is what I was mentioning before. If you wanted to put a hat on one of your little guys that have a hook, you just would have that hole in the back. Feed your hook through the hole in the hat. And then you have a cute little snowman. So if you wanted to make your little wee person look like you and maybe you want to make it look like a friend or a grandparent or one of your parents. And then you can make two of them and give it away as a present. That way you guys can both each have one. And I think it would make a great gift. OK, guys, that's it for today. I really hope you enjoy this activity of making wee people. And I hope you learn something and that maybe you can share one of your creations with a friend or a parent or a grandparent or somebody that you know, maybe a neighbor. I really enjoy doing this. The thing I miss most about virtual classes, even though they're really cool to do, is that I miss seeing your smiling faces and your creations. Because I always say that is my favorite part about doing classes and doing programs at the library is seeing what you create. If you wanted to send a picture of your finished product, I would always love to see it. You can send it to me through my email address and I'll put that in at the end of the video. So thanks again for joining me. And I hope you have a great vacation and a great time home enjoying the winter and the snow and this magical time. All right, bye bye.