Colored Rice Christmas Snowman Decoration

Fun little Christmas decoration to make that only took me a few hours to build. You could modify the clear ornament and head size to make a large table centerpiece or smaller to make tree ornaments.

• Tealight candle
• Ribbon
• 2 1/2" clear ball ornament
• 15 to 20 drops of red food coloring
• Quart sized food storage bag
• 2/3 cup uncooked rice
• Disposable cup
• 1/2 tsp water
• Aluminum foil
• Funnel or paper to make one
• 2 small black buttons
• 2" Styrofoam ball
• Orange push pin
• Small craft eyes
• 5 Black map pins
• 65# Black card stock
• Black marker
• Glue gun
• Scissors

• Remove the candle from the holder. Mine came right out easily. If not, you can also burn the candle for awhile until the wax is about half gone. You just need the clear ornament to set inside the holder.
• You need a piece of ribbon that's 5 1/4" x 5/8". I chose a wider ribbon for the pattern and had to cut it to those dimensions.
• Using a hot glue gun, attach the ribbon to the holder.

Using a hot glue gun, attach the clear ornament to the base. Keep in mind that it needs to be as straight as possible or your finished snowman will be leaning. I just eye balled it and it came out fine.

• Put 2/3 cup rice into a Quart storage bag. You can add more rice, its better to have extra than not enough.
• In a disposable cup add water and food coloring. The more food coloring, the darker the color. This is where you have to experiment to get the color your looking for. I used 20 drops for mine.
• Pour your color mixture into the bag with the rice, seal the bag and shake it like crazy until all the rice is covered.
• Dry the rice. I used aluminum foil, but you can really use anything like parchment paper, paper towels, newspaper or even a baking sheet. Dump the rice out of the bag onto the aluminum foil and spread it around into a thin layer.
• Surprisingly its not really wet straight out of the bag, so you could actually skip this step, but 5 or 10 minutes drying time is about all you would need.

If you have a funnel that will fit in the ornament hole, use it. I didn't, so I rolled up a piece of paper to make one. Then its just place the funnel in the ornament hole and dump the rice in.

Force the Styrofoam ball down on the ornament and tack it into place with hot glue. Don't worry if it looks ugly, its hard to tack it together pretty. The scarf will hide everything.

• Find the front of the snowman. I put the base glue joint as the back of the snowman.
• Hot glue the buttons on the front of the body. Space them to what you think looks good.
• I started with the nose for the face. Push the Orange nose pin into the center of the head aligned with the buttons.
• I did the mouth next. I started with the first black map pin directly below the nose and worked the others around the face.
• Using hot glue attach the eyes. I tried to line them up close to the edge of the mouth.

You need a piece of ribbon 11" x 1/2". Again, I used a wider ribbon and had to cut it to dimension. I recommend using a wire ribbon, so you can form it. Hot glue it around the neck and form the rest to your desired look.

I designed the hat by hand, so I'm going to explain it that way, but you could also do it on a Cricut.

I purchased solid core card stock, so I don't need the black marker shown at the beginning. If you don't use solid core, all your cuts will show white, that's what the markers for, to touch up and cover the white.

Dimensions for the hat

• 2 1/2" brim ( same size as the body )
• 1 1/2" hat ( same size as the base )
• 1" tall

Make a 2 1/2" circle using a compass.

Center a tealight in the circle and trace it.

Free hand draw tabs on the inside of the circle, doesn't matter what they look like or size.

In another spot, trace tealight candle.

Free hand draw tabs on the outside of the circle.

Mark out a 5 1/4" x 1" piece.

Cut out all pieces. I used a combo of scissors and Exacto knife.

• Take the long strip and wrap it around a tealight candle and hot glue it together to make a cylinder. Dont glue it to the tealight, your just using that as the right size for the cylinder.
• Fold the tabs on the top of the hat piece, put on top of the cylinder piece with the tabs inside the cylinder. Glue the tabs to the cylinder. I found it hard to get a glue gun in that space, so I ended up using Gorilla glue, but any glue would work.
• Cut a 5 1/4" x 3/8" piece of ribbon. I used the same ribbon as I used on the base. Hot glue it to the bottom of the cylinder.
• For the brim, do it the same way as you did the top
• Use a black marker to touch up any white spots if not using solid core card stock.
• Using a hot glue gun attach hat to head.