How to Make a Thanksgiving Turkey Photo Garland

Because all your loved ones are just a bunch of turkeys!

Looking for a fun, festive, fuss-free decoration for Thanksgiving? I LOVE this personalized turkey garland that illustrates all of your guests and loved ones as their truest selves. It’s super easy to create, can be displayed just about anywhere, and is guaranteed to be the hit of the holiday! For bonus points, it also allows you to show all your loved ones that you love them so much that you’re willing to sneakily print photos of them off of social media for your own nefarious purposes. Everyone needs regular reminders that their photos aren’t safe online!

Here’s how!

Materials

Here’s everything that you need to make this personalized turkey garland:

• photos of friends, family, and pets. Choose 4″x6″ photos that are cropped so that the chosen head is between 3″ and 3.5″ tall. It doesn’t even matter if this makes the head a bit pixelated or blurry–we’re not making an heirloom that will be passed down to future generations here… or ARE we?!?
• brown cardstock or similar paper. Construction paper or brown paper bags would also work well for this. Thin cardboard food packaging could also work in a pinch, but it’s not quite dark enough for a perfect match. If you get really desperate, just take a brown crayon or marker to white cardstock–a bit of scribbly effect would honestly make this look even funnier!
• white paper. Junk mail envelopes or any scrap white paper, including the backs of receipts, is fine for this. I used the non-watermarked parts of the backs of the cropped photos for this, and I managed to squeak out juuuuust enough!
• white printer paper and a pencil for tracing. Any thin white paper will do.
• scissors and glue. For my first iteration of this project, I used double-sided tape, but maybe I keep the thermostat too cold in my house, because it would not stay stuck! Using white Elmer’s glue took only a few seconds longer, and I’m confident that everything will stay stuck. You could probably also get away with using hot glue, but you’d have to be careful not to warp the paper with the heat.
• twine and tape for the garland.

Step 1: Create the turkey template.

Because this is just for your own personal use, Google to find a copyright-free line art illustration of a cartoon-style turkey carcass, blown up on your computer screen to approximately 6.5″ tall. You can absolutely use a different size, but remember to resize the photo heads to be proportionate.

Gently rest a piece of white printer paper over the image, then gently trace it with a pencil.

Cut out the image to make the turkey template, then separately trace and cut out just the leg bone to make the leg bone template.

Step 2: Trace and cut out all the pieces.

For each turkey, you need one photo head, one turkey cut from brown cardstock, and two leg bones cut from white paper.

For the best photo heads, try to cut exactly around each person’s head, omitting any part of their neck and all their extra chins. I tried to keep most of each person’s hairstyle, although I gave little haircuts as necessary.

If you have multiples of these to make and a computerized die-cutter, I HIGHLY recommend creating a vector image that can be machine-cut. I have a Cricut, and although I don’t use it for most projects, I loooooove using it for tedious and time-consuming projects like this!

Step 3: Glue all the pieces together.

Place the head to slightly overlap the top of the carcass, place the white leg bone pieces over the brown leg bone template, and glue everything in place. If there’s some brown leg bone peeking out around the white leg bone pieces, just trim it away.

Step 4: Attach the finished turkeys to the garland.

Tape the twine to the back of each turkey in two spots, adjusting the spacing however you prefer. Leave enough twine at each end of the garland to tie it.

Alternatively, you could mount these decorations to a window or mirror with Command strips (I sent a set of my kid and her roommates to them to stick to their dorm room door), or attach them to place card holders to show everyone where they should sit at the Thanksgiving table.

I know it’s probably a little immature, but I absolutely CANNOT stop laughing at my Thanksgiving turkey photo garland. Why is the one with the dog randomly the funniest?!?

Don’t eat turkey? It would take a little more work, but I also think you could pop someone’s head on top of a piece of cardstock pumpkin pie for equal humor, or rig each person up as their own personal Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon. I call dibs on Snoopy!

P.S. Looking for even more DIY Thanksgiving decorations? Here you go!