How to make a drum for Wake Up Day! 🥁
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!
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.
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.
Now, we apply paste around the cardboard tube so we can glue our tissue paper on.
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.
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.
Cut your tissue paper into a strip that fit the dimensions around your cardboard tube. You will cut these strips into your decorative triangles.
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.
Leave your newly decorated cardboard drum base to dry before we continue onto our next step of our drum making!
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.
You will need enough material to create two heads for the top and bottom of the drum.
Place the base of your drum onto your fabric of choice and trace two drum heads.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Once tightened, continue to sew the heads across your drum base.
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!
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.
Use your doll or animal to approximate how long the drum strap should be. Once you've decided, cut to the appropriate length.
Go ahead and tuck one side of your strap into the bottom head of your drum. Sew in the strap to secure.
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.
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.
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.
Measure out your ribbon around the drum, cut to the length of your liking.
To be extra secure, you can sew the two ends of the ribbon together. Then, start your gluing of ribbon to the drum!
Repeat this step with the ribbon on the bottom of your drum.
Once your glue has dried down, you're ready for 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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