Yesterday I showed you how we made our Bethlehem (Future Ticia 2025 is about to combine all those posts into one). Today, I’ll show you part of how we made our figures for the peg doll nativity. While my kids play with this at home, I could see this as a great center for a preschool Sunday School class. If I were using this with my Christmas Story, I would place this with the Jesus is born! lesson.
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Supplies for the Peg Doll Nativity
wooden peg dolls (I buy mine at Casey’s Wood Supply, Future Ticia 2022 bought them from Amazon when I’m not buying large numbers at once, but Casey’s Wood Supply has a wider variety possible), acrylic paint, paint brushes, sharpies (there will be more supplies for the adding details post)
How to paint your Peg Doll Nativity
I’ve found it easiest to first paint your peg doll, completely covering it with the skin color.
After painting the skin color on, cover the places you don’t want to be painted with blue tape. In this instance, I only covered the hands because the robes were all going to be the same colors.
In between colors, I’ve found it expedient to just clean the paintbrush with a paper towel. The times I’ve actually cleaned it with water, I had problems because then the paint got watered down from the excess water on the brush, no matter how well I dried it.
After painting the clothes, we painted the hair. I’ve found it best to paint hair last because then you can paint over clothes if need be, and it looks more natural.
The top picture is the Mommy-painted and decorated figures (tomorrow’s post will have what we did for those extra decorations now it’s below).
And the kiddo painted ones. These ones are Princess’, as near as I can tell…………
Adding details to your peg dolls
Now, let’s add details to our Nativity peg dolls.
The secret: dots. Velcro dots and glue dots.
Supplies to add accessories
velcro dots, glue dots, fun foam,fabric scraps, and any other random bits and bobs you want to use to create things for the craft
With glue dots, you can add to your Nativity peg dolls:
With bits of leftover fabric. We have lace angel wings. 1/4” wide 12 inch strip of cloth to make a turban (very messily applied). A head scarf to protect from the sun. Cut a pipe cleaner down, and it becomes quite a nice little headdress.
Future Ticia 2025 will add that my Sunday School class would use glue dots and fabric scraps to make all sorts of clothing to make sure their peg dolls were not cold.
When you add Velcro dots to your Nativity peg dolls, your person can hold:
Once you add Velcro dots to your nativity peg dolls, your person can hold a present they are bringing, a bottle to drink, a jug from fun foam, or a pipe cleaner staff.
There are so many things you can have your characters hold. Basically, if you can stick a Velcro dot on it, the peg dolls can hold it.
Now, let’s build the buildings for our nativity
Okay, I was originally going to copy this all into one post, but then I realized JUST how long that was going to make this post, so I kept this as TWO separate posts.
So, go check out Bethlehem Small World Play.
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