Placeholders for Your Thanksgiving Table

Setting a lovely tablescape for your Thanksgiving meal can be such a fun activity! It makes the atmosphere of the day that much more special. I enjoy decorating with candles and natural elements. Nothing too crazy because the real star of the show that day is the meal itself and you don’t want the table to be too cluttered. I’m not usually one to assign seating for Thanksgiving but if I did, these cute little turkey placeholders would be perfect to pair with my Thanksgiving tablescape!

I used cartoon turkeys as my inspiration which I found just by googling “Cartoon Turkey.” This project is so much fun and perfect to do on an evening when you want to get creative. Put on your favorite movie and get crafting!

Placeholders for Your Thanksgiving Table

Supplies:

Cardstock or Scrapbook paper in various colors (I had red, brown, orange, yellow, and tan)
Scissors
Glue Stick
1 3/4″ Wood Clothespins
Hot Glue & Hot Glue Gun
Fine Tip Pen

Method:

Start by creating a stencil for your turkey body. Cut out a small square of cardstock, fold in half and draw half of what you want the shape of your turkey body to be. My turkey body is about 2 inches tall. I wanted a smaller circle for the head and a more round bottom half with a long neck.
Create a stencil for your turkey feathers. I did a sort of long teardrop shape that is 1 1/2 inches in length. Cut out the amount of turkeys you will need (1 for each place setting). For the feathers, you will need 8 in total. I used 4 colors so I had two of each color. Feel free to use all the same colors or different colors that you like for this!
Lay out your feathers side by side. I alternated colors for mine. Using the larger circle of your turkey body stencil, trace it and cut out circles in one of the colors to match the feathers.
Using your glue stick, glue the colored circle to the feathers to keep them in place. Make sure there is a little bit of the circle below the line of feathers. You will use this to line up where you glue the body on the front!
Flip your feathers over and glue the turkey body into place, lining the bottom up with the small amount of the back circle showing.
Decide on what size beak you want to put on your turkey. I created a template for this too and cut out the number of beaks I wanted. For the gobbler, I did not use a stencil as the pieces were too small. I just tried to cut them into shapes that looked similar.
Glue the beak and the gobblers to your turkeys. I actually glued my beak and gobbler before I attached the body to the feathers but any order will do!
Using a fine-tip pen, draw the eyes on your turkeys. I also put two little dots on the beak to simulate little nostrils.
Using hot glue, attach your turkeys to the clothes pins. Create your name labels and pin the turkeys to them for a cute little placeholder!