Nutcracker Headless Horseman

Dig around in your Christmas decorations for this spooky cute Halloween DIY!! If you’d prefer to watch the full tutorial, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/yH7wKLBEGjk?si=sBKF3uaK7-rUpK3y

I love nutcrackers and I also love Halloween so I figured why not combine the two?! You can put your own spin on this DIY and do any Halloween theme on your nutcracker, but I decided to do make a Headless Horseman with mine!

You'll obviously need a nutcracker for this project. You likely have one already in your Christmas decor, but if you don't feel like dragging your totes out of the attic like me, you can purchase one off Amazon. I found this 15 inch one for around ten dollars. 

The first step for my Headless Horseman nutcracker was to cut his head off. I used my miter box hand saw from amazon to do this and it was quite easy. If you've decided to make a different character for your Halloween nutcracker, you can keep his head in tact.

I also removed the sequins from his chest, the cupcake from his hand, and gave him a light sanding.

Once he was beheaded, I gave the entire nutcracker two coats of Waverly chalk paint in the color Ink

I felt like he needed something fancy on his chest since I removed his sequins so I pulled out one of my air dry clay molds from Amazon that has a pretty little design. I made two of the pieces with some of my air dry clay and they fit perfectly on each side of his chest to give him a little bit of detail.

I glued the pieces on with some gel super glue then let the clay dry for a few hours.

Then I painted over the clay pieces with a coat of the Waverly Ink chalk paint.

Once the paint had dried completely, I went over the clay pieces, his belt, and the top of his boots with some European Gold Rub N Buff to bring out some of the details.

Of course, the Headless Horseman definitely needs a cape, so I grabbed some black fabric that I had in my stash from Dollar Tree and cut a piece down a little longer than my nutcracker. I wrapped the piece of fabric around the top of the nutcracker before cutting it to make sure it was wide enough to fit around his "neck".

 I also cut a piece of a cereal box the same width as the piece of fabric then folded the piece in half to double the sturdiness.

I used a glue stick to hold the folded over cereal box.

Then I placed the piece at the top of my piece of fabric and rolled it down a few times to cover the cardboard.

I used some gel super glue to hold the rolled down fabric in place, but you can use hot glue or whatever you have.

Once the glue was dry, I pinched the ends of the "collar" of the cape and pulled them around together in the front. I slightly overlapped one side over the other and used fabric glue and clamps to attach one side over the other. Again, you could use whatever glue you have.

I also ended up putting a few stitches of black thread through mine just to make sure it stayed closed together, but this is totally optional and the glue should hold it just fine.

After the glue was dry, then it was time to make his cape a little spookier and worn, so I used my scissors and just started cutting the edges making it look jagged.

Then I put a little bit of gel super glue on the top of the nutcracker and pressed the collar of the cape on there to attach the cape to the nutcracker. I just held it until the glue was dry.

The Headless Horseman obviously needs a Jack O' Lantern head, so I had this pumpkin mold from Amazon that was the perfect size. You could also use one of the small pumpkins that come in packs from the Dollar store for this too, but since I had this and it was the perfect size, I just used my air dry clay to make my own.

After I made my clay pumpkin, I used a little stick to make a hole in the bottom. The nutcracker had a hole in his hand from where I removed his cupcake, so it worked out perfectly.

I painted the clay pumpkin with two coats of  burnt orange paint I mixed up before attaching it to the nutcracker so I didn't get any paint on him.

I cut down a skinny dowel from Dollar Tree and glued it into the hole in the nutcrackers hand from where the cupcake used to be.

Then I added a little glue on the dowel and slid the pumpkin down onto it.

Finally, to finish him off, I used some brown paint to paint the pumpkin stem then used my black paint pen to draw on the Jack O' Lantern face.