How to make a drum for Wake Up Day! 🥁

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Crafts

Did you hear? You, too, can be part of the Wake Up Day band. We've assembled this handy tutorial to create your own Wake Up Day drum to wake up your woodland friends. Follow along from our video HERE. Simply excellent!

A photo of an empty tape cardboard base, which will be utilized for the base of our drum in the tutorial.

First, find a hollow tube to use as the base of the drum. We're reusing the cardboard tube from our packing tape. We've also gathered green tissue paper to decorate our base.

If you would like to create drumsticks, we cut and sanded down wooden chopsticks and found wooden beads to act as the head of the mallet.

This photo shows a ruler being used to measure the length of the tissue paper used in the tutorial.

Next, we're going to decorate our drum using a strip of tissue paper. Cut your strip leaving extra space height-wise to go around your drum.

Two hands wrap bright green tissue paper around the cardboard tape, the next step in creating our Wake Up Day Drum.

Now, we apply paste around the cardboard tube so we can glue our tissue paper on.

A hand applies sticky paste around a cardboard tube so the tissue paper can be attached to the craft.

Once the cardboard is covered with paste, you can apply your base coat of tissue paper! Be gentle when applying, the tissue paper could rip with the wet glue. Luckily, any tears can be covered with the triangles of tissue paper we will cut for decoration.

A hand is carefully attaching the green tissue paper around the sticky cardboard tube to create the colored base of our drum.

While your paste dries, take your secondary color of tissue paper. On our first drum, we used orange tissue paper. In this example, we'll be using a dark green for a tonal look of green hues.

A hand cuts strips of a different shade of green tissue paper that will later be cut into triangles to paste onto our drum craft.

Cut your tissue paper into a strip that fit the dimensions around your cardboard tube. You will cut these strips into your decorative triangles.

A hand is shown cutting the previous strip of dark green tissue paper into decorative triangles to paste onto our Wake Up Day drum.

Apply a layer of paste to your drum base where you would like to place your triangles. Repeat until you have a triangular pattern all around your drum.

The photo shows paste in the frame with a paint brush, the paste being used to delicately place the decorative triangles onto the cardboard base of our drum. A hand is placing the triangles onto the cardboard base.

Leave your newly decorated cardboard drum base to dry before we continue onto our next step of our drum making!

A close up image of the finished green tissue paper decorations on our cardboard base of the Wake Up Day Drum. A hand lightly secures the triangles onto the cardboard tube.

Next, we are going to create the head of the drum. In our video example, we used suede. However, you can substitute suede with any alternatives that can cover your tube. There are options all around your home, such as plastic shelf covering. We used this plastic covering for our first drum.

Two hands lay out a large rectangular strip of suede fabric, next to the drum that is currently in progress.

You will need enough material to create two heads for the top and bottom of the drum.

Two hands using our cardboard tube drum base to trace circles onto the suede with a pen. These circles will become the top and bottom of our drum.

Place the base of your drum onto your fabric of choice and trace two drum heads.

This photo shows the result of tracing the cardboard tube onto our suede, which will be used as our base for the drum head. The hands in the photo are proceeding to trace another circle from the tube above the first circle, leaving enough room for some allowance that we will cut around the traced circle.

Now that you have two circles traced, cut your fabric with some additional space to spare around the circle. This additional space will help you stretch the fabric over your drum in the stitching process.

This photo shows our suede being cut out with scissors. The hands are carefully cutting slightly outside the traced circles, to leave some seam allowance for our drum.

With your circles cut out, it's time to attach them together with thread so they can stretch across your drum base.

Measure the height of your base - you want the thread length across the two drum heads to be slightly shorter than the base's height so the fabric can be stretched nice and tight. This is how you create maximum drummy-ness*. 

However, be careful not to make the threads too short. If the fabric is stretched out too tight it could rip your drum heads, especially if you're using a plastic alternative.

The photo shows the finished product of the two cut out suede circles. The hand has flipped the suede to the other side, which does not have pen marks visible from our prior tracing.

For this process, you will need a needle and some embroidery thread to connect your two heads. Begin to sew the heads together. Leave an appropriate amount of thread space between the two drum heads so you can eventually insert the drum base between the two heads. You can also draw dots where you'd like to sew along the side where you traced your circle to create a helpful guide for little ones!

A hand is sewing with a needle appropriate for sewing leather, and some embroidery floss. The needle is being sewn between the two circles in a V shaped pattern, using the pen tracing as our guide.

Once you've sewn the two heads halfway around, insert your drum base. You may need to go around and adjust the thread tightness so your drum fits nice and snug.

With our initial pieces of embroidery thread sewn between our two suede heads, a hand has now placed the two heads on top of our cardboard tube base, and is proceeding to sew the two together to form our drum.

Once tightened, continue to sew the heads across your drum base.

The photo portrays a close up of our hands carefully sewing the two heads of the drum together with our leather needle. You can notice the intricate V pattern that is keeping the drum heads attached to the cardboard tube of the drum.

Once you have sewn and tightened the heads to your drum, you can tie your threads together to secure the drum. You can now drum!

The drum is now completely sewn together with brown embroidery thread. Two hands neatly tie a bow with the remaining length left of embroidery thread to secure the leather heads of the drum onto our cardboard tube base.

Next, we're going to attach a piece of twill tape to our drum to act as a neck strap for the dolls. You can substitute twill tape for any kind of ribbon or string you see fit for Wake Up Day. Optional: we added little embroidered details to the twill tape.

The photo is a flat lay display of various colors of embroidery thread used to decorate the long cotton strip of fabric laying next to the threads, creating the drum's strap for attaching it to the doll. It is an example of the decorative embroidery work

Use your doll or animal to approximate how long the drum strap should be. Once you've decided, cut to the appropriate length.

Two hands are shown attaching the decorative strap to the base of the drum in a U shape that can fit over the doll's head.

Go ahead and tuck one side of your strap into the bottom head of your drum. Sew in the strap to secure.

A hand is shown using a needle to secure the base of the strap onto the drum.

Repeat with the other end of your strap. Be sure the straps are wide enough at the base to fit around your doll or animal's head.

A hand is pressing onto the now secured strap onto the drum after a bit of wood glue was applied to the drum.

Using wood glue, we're going to secure the straps to the drum. In our video, we may have used slightly too much glue. You can always take a paint brush to distribute any additional glue, like in our case. 

A fine paint brush is being used on top of our drum to lightly apply more glue in a delicate fashion.

Alright, now your straps are secured. It's time to locate your decorative ribbon. You're going to put the ribbon around the base of the drums. 

A piece of ribbon is shown next to the drum to indicate measuring the ribbon around the drum to be cut and applied to our craft.

Measure out your ribbon around the drum, cut to the length of your liking.

Two now cut strips of velvety gold ribbon are displayed next to our drum craft in progress.

To be extra secure, you can sew the two ends of the ribbon together. Then, start your gluing of ribbon to the drum!

The first piece of velvety ribbon is being sewn around the circumference of the drum's head with a matching gold embroidery thread in a ladder stitch fashion.

Repeat this step with the ribbon on the bottom of your drum.

A scissor is shown snipping the excess of embroidery thread remaining on the drum's velvety ribbon after being sewn around the drum.

Once your glue has dried down, you're ready for Wake Up Day!

 

The final craft drum product is shown being worn on a Hazel Village Juliette Rabbit doll. She is displayed proudly with her newly made craft, ready to celebrate WAKE UP DAY!

This drum is sure to wake up the Village's hibernating folks, both familiar friends and new. 

*DRUMMY-NESS: A word coined by Jane to describe how much your drum sounds like a drum.

 

Did you make this craft at home? Send us a photo or tag us on social media @hazelvillage! For questions, please email us at hello@hazelvillage.com. 

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