My daughter requested a unicorn birthday party this year – fun! I like to try to come up with a related craft for our birthday parties that can be an activity at the party and then also part of the favors to take home. For this one, we made Unicorn Hobby Horses for all of the kids to decorate. I questioned whether or not this was too ambitious, but we decided to go for it and I’m glad that we did. They came together faster than I expected and I loved seeing the kids’ creativity with the decorating. There were some super cute unicorns at the end and everyone was pretty excited to take theirs home.
Here is a general guide of how we made these things:
First, cut and sew the head shape. I drew the head shape free hand on some poster board and used that as a guide. Mine were about 19 inches tall and 12 inches from the nose to the back of the head. I tried a couple of different shapes and the one piece of advice that I would give is to line the horn up with the neck. This way the dowel rod can go in the horn without twisting the rest of the head. Otherwise, you don’t have to be very precise with this. I cut ours out from an old bed sheet that had a rip in it that I had held on to for a reason I didn’t know until now! 🙂 I then used scrap fabric to make the hair and just pinned small squares between the front and back of the head pieces. After trimming, sewing, and turning right side out, I cut the “hair” fabric into strips. I thought about leaving this as part of the decorating for the kids to do, but I had my (almost) 6 year-old try it and it was a little too tricky.
Next step was to stuff and stick the unicorn. I used a regular fiber fill (Poly Fil Brand) and a 5/8 x 48 inch dowel rod. I put the dowel rod to the top of the unicorn horn and then filled in all around it with the stuffing and then tied the bottom closed with yarn.
Next step was to decorate and play with the unicorn horses, which was our birthday party activity. We used sharpie markers, tulle, yarn, glitter glue, and other little gems and stickers from our art supplies closet.
The kids seemed to have a really good time with this one.
I’d love to hear how it goes for you, if you give it a try. Enjoy!
The Mom Plus 