Candy Cane Horse: Year of the Horse

At the end of January it’s time for Chinese New Year. As I was taking down the Christmas Tree the other day it occurred to me that you could make such a cute little Horse for Chinese Year of the Horse using the candy canes and a few bits of felt.

I used the candy cane as a template and drew around it, then used that as the basis for a template. I traced around the template and cut out a pair of horses heads. Then I sewed the pair of felt horses heads together, leaving the flat bottom edge open to allow me to add the candy cane, and leaving a wide edge along the back of the head where the mane will be. I used a backstitch for strength.

If you don’t want to sew it though, you could use a glue gun instead, remembering to leave a wide seam for the horse’s mane. Add ‘sewn’ detail with a Sharpie.

Once all the edges were sewn, I added an eye- again, you could just glue one on- a button, for example.

Then I snipped a fringe all along the back of the horse’s head- where I left the wide seam- making little snips in from the edge towards the seam, at regular intervals, to make the horses mane.

Once finished, just pop in your candy cane and you are ready to play Horsey!

Happy Chinese New Year.

Then I took some bakers’ twine- about fifteen cm long- and threaded it around the horse’s nose and across it’s head to create a rein. I kept it in place by threading under the stitches I made when I sewed the head up. If you are glueing, just tie it in a loop, and secure with a little glue at various points.

 If you are searching for more Chinese New Year ideas, why not look at some of these?

Make a Chinese Drum from recycled material

Cat’s Yellow Days has an excellent round up of Chinese Crafts

The Gingerbread House makes pretty Chinese New Year tea lights

Fab loo roll dragons from Jennifer’s Little World

Amazing Junk Modelling for Chinese New Year from Missie Lizzie. I love corks!

Peakle Pie has Chinese Fans and Paper Plate Dragons.

Beautiful shadow puppets from Makiedo.