GIANT NUTCRACKER TUTORIAL - DIY

Today we are building a Christmas Nutcracker that is almost 7 feet tall. Now this

tutorial

is the most complete and detailed Nutcracker

tutorial

you will ever find and all the links, measurements and materials I used are shown in the video and linked in the description below. So if you've ever wanted to build a

nutcracker

, today is the day, so join me in this amazing Christmas tutorial to start making our Nutcracker. We need PVC pipe and we will start with the legs. The legs will be 24 inches. tall and we are going to use 4 inch diameter PVC pipe and they sell them in 10 foot sections.

Now this PVC pipe is called sewer drain pipe and it is thinner than normal PBC pipes, so make sure you buy the sewer pipe. drainpipe I also link everything I use on my channel in the description below, just press more and you will have all the links to everything I use. Also, I do not receive any type of commission from these companies for posting the link, so if you find a different product that might work, go ahead and use it because I do not make a dime from any of these affiliate links. I just put the links there to make it easier for you, the viewer, to find what I'm using.

To find out which store it is from and its price, so let's go ahead and cut this PVC pipe, so this is what should be left. We have cut four pieces in total, two of them are for the legs and two for the arms, all of this is from a PVC pipe and now that we have cut the arms and legs we can move on to the next step. I wanted to take a moment to mention the first book I wrote, it's called Little Olive and the. Wally bat and is available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle, it is rated for ages 2-6 and follows a brave little Olive who gets lost and is found by a very helpful brown bat if anyone wants to support me or read it.

Your little ones go check it out, Little Olive and Wally the Bat on Amazon. Now let's go back to this amazing tutorial for making the base of the Nutcracker. We need 2x4 lumber and plywood. Now we need to cut four pieces. Two of these pieces need to be cut to 24 inches and the other two need to be cut to 21 inches, we will screw them together into a square and it will be a 24 inch by 24 inch box, the plywood needs to be cut to the same size. 24 x 24 inches, you can use a half inch or 3/4 inch plywood.

Now we're probably going to need 3 inch screws, we're going to screw it all together and then we're probably going to use 1 and 1/4 inch screws to attach the plywood to this wood frame, so let's start screwing it in nicely, so I'm going to use my pre-drilling bit. two holes on all sides so the wood doesn't split, so we'll make sure it fits well. and Plum like this for the body, we will use a Sono tube. This one measures 4T high and 12T wide and they are sold at hardware stores like Lowe's or Home Depot and this will be the main body.

We need to cover this with Dry Lock. Dry Lock is a waterproofer so it will work well outside, that's where I keep my accessories so I have some Dry Lock. It's gray, but they also sell it in white. You can use it or and then we're there. We will cover it with two layers of dry hair, once it dries, we can apply the colors we want to paint our Nutcracker red, white, green, whatever you want, but we are going to cover it too. Dried locks can be toxic, so don't breathe. on fumes in a closed area don't use dry lock inside the house if you're going to do it use a respirator I'm outside it's nice and windy let's be safe in this channel so let's paint all this once your tube has dried with dry strand , we can paint it with our exterior latex paint.

Now you can paint your Nutcracker any color you want, but if you want to follow my procedure, I will list the colors I am using right below the screen. You know what I'm buying, I always use vpar paint from Lowe's, but you can go to Home Depot or Sherman Williams and get their paint, so this is important, we need to measure this to paint it in sections, the first 12 you need to measure. from top to bottom 12 inches will be the hat area once you mark it, let's go 12 inches down to make the face area that will be the face, we will paint it a nice white or pink color, whatever color you want to do. the face continues and then the rest, which should be the remaining 24 inches, will be for the torso and chest.

Now this is very important because these measurements define the area, so just remember 12 inches down, 12 more down for Agnes's face and the rest, which should be 24 inches will be the chest and torso and I'm going to Divi divide these sections with painter's tape, the blue painter's tape that you can get at the store, we'll just divide it and then paint it. we're going to let it dry bam and then we're done then we can do the face details so now it's time to attach the legs to the base we're going to cut two 2x4's that are going to go inside the legs remember we cut 2x4 for the base side now we need two more pieces.

Each piece of 2x4 wood needs to be cut to 24 inches, which is the same length as the leg, so what we're going to do is I'm going to put the legs right in the center and let me rotate them a little bit like this and you can choose to put them very close together or a little further apart. I'm going to separate them about an inch apart, but like I told you. You can make whatever size you want, we have our disk and the disk, the wooden disk, it goes on top like this, this wooden disk will attach with screws to the 2x4s that are inside this and we will turn it over and secure it . two screws on the bottom of the 2x4 to make it one solid piece so let's start with the 2x4 first and as always everything I use from the PVC to the paint to the tools I use it all.

I link it in the description of this video. Hit the plus option, so what we've done is placed the 2x4s inside the legs so we know exactly where we want them and now they're almost an inch apart between the legs. very carefully I'm going to remove this so I'm going to do the same thing on the other side and before we move anything we're going to take a pencil and we're going to outline this leg so we know exactly where it's going to go, so take your pencil, do it in both sides and then we can drill a hole in the bottom and we can put this on its side and then drill two screws from the bottom into this wood so that it can be held up well, so I made two pre-drilled holes with our little bit of drill and I have my helper on the other side holding the wood, so you will need a second person to help you, once you have it lined up with the box. that we did with the outline, you find the holes that you made in the center and then we are going to insert it directly, they are going to hold the wood very well and then we are going to get right there in the other hole that we made and we insert it, so once Now that we're done screwing them in, this is what a leg should be that's sturdy and now we're ready to put the PVC on top and we can use our wooden disc on top.

Because that wooden disc that we have here, this wooden disc is where the top half of the Nutcracker will be located, so this part is very important, we have the wooden disc right here that will go on top of our legs, but before we do anything we need to join two more 2x4 pieces together. Now this is important because these 2x4s will offer support once we place the Sono tube on top of all of this, so this way we have two pieces of wood cut to 16 inches. and we're going to place the wood on the edge about a quarter to a half inch away from the edge so if you measure here just make sure it's about a quarter to a half inch from the edge if you want to mark it like I've marked it and they're one in front on the other, this will be the front, these will be where the arms are on the sides and here is the back, so you want to place it on the side where the arms would be.

Normally it is like this once we put it like this we are going to do the same thing we did with the legs and the base we are going to put two screws down there I am going to use 2 inch screws and for the base of course I use 3 inch screws for the legs and once we do that we can place the Sono tube on top and why do we need this so we can put a couple of screws with washers through the Sono tube into the wood to prevent anything from tipping over and that will give it the necessary support , so now that we've marked it, take your pencil and then make two circles where you're going to put the screws, you want it to be right in the middle and then we take out our drill with our drill bit like this, we're going to pre-drill a hole, by pre-drilling the holes, we are going to prevent the wood from splitting or cracking, so we have that there, we are going to put this like this. this we make sure everything is lined up right, then we're going to put it on its side like this and then with the help of someone else, I like to have someone help me, they're going to hold it like this and then we're going to I'm going to drill two screws right here to hold this in place very nicely and this is what we should have after we screw it in with our two screws, take your Sono tube and like this run it over the top, just like that, so this is important before we attach the arms to the main body, before you attach the, you want to paint the face, so once we finish painting this, you want to paint the face over this, so I let it dry for at least 24 hours, everything is ready.

We did two coats of paint, so I actually included in this video, in the description of this video, there will be a Word document that will be uploaded to a Google Doc's Link account, so if you press more on the video below, you will see a downloadable link it will give you the word documents that I use you can print them you can cut out the eyes you can cut out the mustache to make it easier for you to place the cut out eye here and then trace it or you can do it freehand It's totally up to you.

I'm not very good at doing it by hand so I asked someone aka Olie to draw the eyes and the mustache so print it out if you need to and then cut it out so once you do that move on. Let's go to this step, but since I'm going to paint the face in a moment, let me show you what we're going to do with the arms, so to attach this arm to the body, let me make sure the camera is facing it right here we go, so for this arm to attach to the body we need a PVC pipe and this PVC pipe has been cut to 20 inches because we want it to go through this Sono pipe into the PVC so it can hold it like this so a pipe of Half inch diameter PVC cut to 20 inches.

Next, we need to make a hole in this and a hole in this, so I've measured it. Remember that measuring all the way down here should be 24 inches. from the top, so I'm going to measure 3 inches down and make a half inch hole. I'm going to do the same thing on the opposite side, just on the opposite side, 3 inches down, drill a hole and then from here I'm going to measure 3 inches down and with the same drill bit, um, I think it's going to be a wood drill bit. . We're going to drill another half inch hole so this PVC pipe can go through the body and into the arm.

The reason we're also doing a 3 inch is because we have the PVC caps that go on top here and those PVC caps need some room to be able to sit, so let's make those holes real quick. So measuring 3 inches we're making a little mark right there then we get a wood spade bit and yes it fits now let's make the same hole in the body of the Sono tube 3 inches down make sure it's on its side and so do it on the opposite end now we have made the hole on both sides and then like this we feel with the finger on the other end and bam you pass it like this like this then we can take our arm out and then like this This, now let me put the camera a little further back , so now it will be like this and that's it, we are going to do the same with the other arm and we are not going to want the arms. to be able to come out easily like this, so we can put a screw in here once we have this here, we can put a screw directly into the actual PVC, the screw can go in just a little bit here to keep this from moving.

Back and forth and at the end of the season you can remove the screw and voila, this thing moves, so let's finish this now that the face is finished, look how it turned out super nice. Alie painted this, obviously because I'm not really him. expert, but I'm including, like I said before, the Word document with these two parts of the face, print them out, cut them out and then you can trace them or use them as a reference so you can do the exact same thing and that's how it came out. Great, the nose will go right here once we paint this color and look at this black line here, where is it?

It's duct tape, that's all. We have black electrical tape. We took it out completely and placed it around to hide the seam between the red and the skin color, so now that we've done that, let's get our other pieces, we have some gold rope, we also have some gold fabric and we have our gold buttons, so let's start putting this on the face, you can do it any way you want, whatever you think will look best, but I'm going to make mine like this, got it, I'm going to put alittle hot glue, I'm going to stick it like this and then.

I'm going to put some buttons in there so let's do it real quick this shouldn't take us more than 15 minutes for the nose we're going to use a piece of 2x4 that we had left over and the only thing we're doing is we're going to draw a line. I have my little ruler here and the nice thing about it is that you can make it any size. The wider you are, the pointier it will be, so we just go like this like this and draw it like this this is about 4 in nothing crazy we're going to get our jigsaw, we're going to cut it out and then we're going to paint it the same color that we painted the face and then we're going to use some hot glue to attach this to your face, so now it's time to put the gold buttons on it.

We have them here, as always I link all the things I use in the description. So what we've done here is I wanted to dress nice, I wanted to be nice and level, so I got some cardboard. I scored an Agnes, so there are several inches here. I marked them with a pen and said this and then I used a pencil and then I made marks every 2 to make sure I did it on this side as well and once that's done we have the pencil marks there and we're going to put this like this, but because this one has a little thing on the back right there we are going to drill a hole I have a small drill bit we are just going to drill a small hole then we are going to put some hot glue on it and we are going to push it Put it in that hole so it looks nice and flush and then we placed RNG.

You can put eight or 10 buttons in there and I think it will be a nice detail, so I realized too late that I wasn't recording when I was painting. the arms and the legs, but it's super simple, we paint all the arms, we paint them red and then when it comes to the legs, the top part of the leg will be white and then the bottom part will be part of the boot. It will be painted black, so we divide it in half. Remember this is 24 inches so 12 inches is white and then 12 inches is black and this is going to go to the base and then we'll just use red for this. color red I'm going to list all the colors that I used so you know exactly what red I used, but yeah, we have that paint and let's move on to the next steps.

I have these wood inlays here that I spray painted gold and they're going to go on the shoulder right here, like this, so I think that'll be a nice little detail. We're also going to put one or two of these in the hat area at the top. Let me point the camera. up there, uh, right here, so yeah, I could put one right here, I could do two, but I think it'll be really nice, we'll just use hot glue. I have spray painted it gold, so let's finish these details well. so let's place our legs on the 2x4 and then we have the piece that we created, we are ready to start, it will go like this as a reminder, this should go where the arms rest, so if this is the front here, if this is the front no we can have this like this, we have to go to where the arms are going to go like this, now we're just going to take a couple of screws and attach this to the 2x4 on the inside and then we're done with that part of the construction, four screws, two on each side and now we have a very sturdy piece, let's place the upper body on top of it, so it's important to remember that we can't have the arm completely touching the body.

This is the PVC pipe that we ran through and painted red so it's not as noticeable and if we do it like this all the way to the body we won't have enough room for our end cap. This is the PVC end cap that I have and it runs like this, but it needs that space to be able to go down, so don't put the screw on the inside of the PVC pipe yet until you're sure it's going to fit, then we can take. I take it off and I'm going to put a single screw right in the middle, let me bring it closer here, so I'm going to take a screw and I'm going to put it here.

I have my drill fits right here, we're going to put a screw in there so this tube can't come out of here, we're going to do the same thing on the other side, that way the tube will stay put there and it'll be the only way to grab it. of the arms is to remove the screw from the screw and so we insert it a little like this now when we insert it on the other side the tube will not be able to come out properly. We are going to place the Hands now on the arm, remember that these are 4 unbreakable Christmas balls.

You can paint them any color you want, but I bought them white and we have our nylon rope right here, so what we're going to do is just put the nylon on. Chain this, let me show you up here, we're going through it, we're putting it all the way to the bottom and it came out right there at the bottom, so now we're going to join this here to the bottom. and let me show you what we do next, once we've placed our Christmas ball down here, we're just going to pull the rope up like this and then you can put it at whatever level you want, you can let it hang down more. or you can just let it show a little bit but whatever you choose then we're going to go inside here and remember well the screw that we put in we're going to make a little knot right here and once we make this knot we can hang it on the little screw, so let me do this real quick like this and then we're going to put it there like this, like this it hangs on the screw and that's it, we're we're going to put some fringe on the end caps for the shoulders and we're just going to grab it like this we're going to put some hot glue right here we're going to do it in sections like this being very careful not to burn ourselves and we're going to do it every which way so this next part is extremely important because it's going to attach the upper part of the body to the base so let's just move the arm out of the way and we have these 1 in washers and what we're going to do is get some screws and we're going to put them through the washer and into the piece of wood that we have inside, remember we put two pieces wooden inside.

This will go like this and probably a third one right here, the arm will cover it, but we can also paint them red to make them less noticeable, but by doing so we will join the entire top half to the bottom half. half with the wood inside, my

nutcracker

s always stay outside, so for those of you who are worried about this getting soft when it rains or breaking, no it doesn't. I've always done this. I have made these nutcrackers for years. and I always do this method to make sure it doesn't fall off and stays firm, so we have this amazing gold fabric.

I'm linking everything below and all I did was cut a piece that wraps around it and I'm going to use some hot glue on this side, this is the back of the Nutcracker so you won't be able to see the seam once you've glue stuck, but it will be like this and it will be like a golden bracelet for the separation between the body and the face we are going to use a little of the same tape that we used for the cuffs and we are simply going to wrap it like this very well, we are going to reach back and 'We're going to put it the same way we did the tape, we're going to put hot glue on the back to hold it together and I think I'm going to put a little bit here, the problem is if I put a little bit here you 'I'm going to be able to see it through this tape, so I think I'm just going to put some on the back.

One of the last things we are going to do with our Nutcracker is add decorations and details, and I bought these. rhinestone ribbons in gold and black, you can get them in any color, they are self-adhesive, but I always like to use a little hot glue and then stick it on top. I'm going to put black rhinestones up here, gold band on top. Some on the cuffs here, maybe some on the boots below, you can do whatever you want, but these add a lot of character, so get creative and go crazy. I link everything I use in the bio below, but these are the options I'm going to use.

In fact, I think I have another gold one with a different style and we're just going to put it in a few different places to give the hair a really nice look. We could leave him without hair, which I think actually looks very nice. that or we could do black white brown here I have white fur fabric that I often use on this channel to cover props like

giant

spiders. You should see them on my channel. I make amazing Halloween decorations, but anyway I cut this to 21 inches by 15 inches and we're just going to put it like this right under that line, we're going to put our ribbon first, we put the ribbon first up here, if you're going to put the tape The Rhinestone, so we're going to I'm going to put this like this, we're going to move the arms a little bit and the way I'm going to hold this is with expanding foam.

I'm going to use an expanding foam that doesn't rise as much on your window. and the door is the blue bottle or if you have cool expanding foam, you can use that too, but we're going to put expanding foam here, then we're going to put this like this, the expanding foam acts as an adhesive and then we're going to put some tape here to hold it for about an hour and then once it dries it is ready. This will get wet and tangled when it rains, but as soon as the sun comes out. it will dry and fluffy like this all the time i always use fur fabric outside it never gets moldy it never gets moldy it will dry as soon as the snow or rain dries in the sun and be fluffy like this for the feet we are just using a Solo cup red that we cut like this, we're going to cut this part out, spray paint black and then with a little bit of hot glue you're just going to put it together like this.

Lastly, for this exposed area of ​​the round wood that we used, we could put some gold ribbon over here, but I'm going to try to paint it with some gold paint. This is the same gold paint I used for the accent details on the wood. overlays, so I'm going to paint that in there, but you could put some tape. One of the last things we are going to place on top is our pizza pan, which we spray painted gold. Now you don't have to use spray paint. the inside only the edges and no one will be able to see the top because it is so tall, but this goes on the top to prevent water from entering the inside of the tube.

It's not necessary to do it, but I've always done it. I did it this way to create a little edge so the water can fall and not into the tube. We're going to use a little hot glue on the inside just to keep it in place, it's not going anywhere. that's it, we're done