St Patrick’s Day Leprechaun coming out of the frame

St Patrick’s Day is coming up quickly and it is a fun spring holiday. Some people build Leprechaun traps for St Patrick’s Day and others make food with green food dye for a bright and fun holiday. Not wanting be to ordinary this year, I decided to do something unexpected. I saw a picture of a small leprechaun that looked as if he was coming out of the frame.  

In my head, I saw a leprechaun coming out of a frame to get or protect his gold. The problem is this will be displayed at work, and we cannot damage our newly painted walls. Therein lies that challenge, it had to be lightweight so it could hang on the wall with a few command strips and not fall. 

Supplies for the Leprechaun

The first step was some supplies. So, off to the craft store for a Styrofoam head, curly red doll hair (not shown), and skin-toned paints. Then to the dollar tree for a felt hat, gold coins, (not shown) gold canning lids (not shown), and grass runner (I had gotten one for the Snoopy Dollar Tree Display), but I needed another one. The grass runners are terrific value and will also be used for an Easter display. 

Sculpting the face of the leprechaun

Starting with the head, I added slime clay. I have never worked with slime clay before, but it dries to almost light paper mâché. That is what I needed, so I decided to try it out and see where it goes. It is like a marshmallow fluff to work with and at times gets bumpy if you are trying to mold it too much. Not sticky on the hands or anything. It does need a longer drying time than even air-dried clay, but when dry it is exceptionally light. It was funny to press into his lips and nose after it was dry. There was some sinkage but not much. Having not worked with it before I was concerned about it holding up to acrylic paint. That is when I decided some air clay would have to be applied over the slime clay for the paint and the hair.

The molded ears with the slime clay for the leprechaun lost some definition and I had to go over them with the air-dry clay. Most of you are more skilled with clay, I am not. I used Play-Doh toys for my tools for the clay. You may have clay tools and that might work better. However, these worked great, to be honest, and nothing sticks to them. 

Applying the Air Day Clay

So, I spread a thin layer of air-dry clay over the top of the leprechaun face. It did not want to smooth out too well over the slime clay. Some areas did great, but others were more uneven. When dry, the air-dry clay makes a very tough surface that is sandable and takes the acrylic paint well. This solid surface would be needed for the glue application of the hair and beard.  

I also sculpted Adam’s apple and more of a standout jawline for this beard to swing out a bit and not look so pointed on the chin. People are going to see the Adam’s apple between the collar and the standout jawline makes no difference, but I thought it looked more human. 

The eyes for Finnigan (the St Patrick’s Day Leprechaun)

I purchased the eyes from Amazon, in more of an oval shape than the round doll eyes and I am glad that I did they fit better on the face. The skin tone was harder I had to try out several mixtures of paints until I had what I thought I wanted for the leprechaun. I cut eyelashes that can be purchased at the dollar store or any store. They were cheap and needed to be cut down to a short length. I mixed burgundy with brown to get about the color of the hair and painted it on the eyelashes. 

I used hot glue to glue on the eyes put a droplet in the inner corner on the outside of the eye and then painted that lightly with a red. Using cream blush and cream bronzer, I applied those to the cheeks, lips, and eyelids. It makes the leprechaun’s face look more like a porcelain doll. Yes, creepy but more realistic. 

The red hair

Then I combed out the curly red hair and hot glued it to the head of my leprechaun. You do not have to do it all around try on his hat and see where you are going to need the hair. His name is now Finnigan. It fits him.  I did the same with the beard and sideburns, filling in with little curly hairs where needed. His eyebrows were glued on and then cut down as close as I could get.

Preparing him for the frame coming out of the wall

Now it is time to cut the head. It had to be flatter to fit on the frame and the wall. I am so glad the air-dried clay was a thin layer because it is hard to cut. There was just a little overage on the top of the head where I needed to cut or should I say saw through. As soon as you hit the Styrofoam it cuts easily and makes a big mess. 

The collar is next you can decide if you want it to attach to the back of the cardboard frame or not. I did not so I did not leave any extra material. I chose to do paper mâché after Finnigan was attached to the frame so it would look like the paper was pulling with him as he emerged from the frame. 

Making the golden frame

Make the frame. I had already measured out the body portion of Finnigan. Then I cut the body portion out and measured it against a piece of cardboard. Then I cut foam board that was about ¾ thick about ¾ of an inch. I glued the form board around the cardboard after I had applied white paper to it. 

This will be the outline for the gold frame for our leprechaun coming out of a frame. Then I cut the taps for the hat. It was harder than I thought I had to keep remeasuring and finally I laid his head down on the cardboard frame in several directions to see which was best. Then I cut the lines with a box cutting and pulled the tabs of the hat through before hot gluing them. After that, I completed the same process for the collar.  

Attaching Finnigan to the Frame

It is time for the hat. Place it on his head and see where the marks are to cut then add an inch or so to that at the top portion of the hat. Not on the rim. The rim will be even with the frame. The overages of the hat will be cut into tabs to be pulled through the cardboard frame and glued to make sure Finnigan is secure on the frame. 

He is attached and well too. Then I painted the colors of the painting around the head and on the paper portion of the frame. At this point, it does not matter if you get a little paint on the foam board pieces. Those will be covered with gold paper.  

St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun body

Start gluing or Modge Podge paper mâché the body on the painted background. This goes fast and does not take long to dry. Now time to start with the green foam piece for the jacket and the white felt applied like it was a bib. I wanted the two fabrics to have a different texture to them which is why I chose green thin foam and a piece of white felt. Then mold a piece of green felt to look like the jacket coming out of the frame. Glue the ends down of both the bib and jacket parts with hot glue. Hot glue worked the best because the form needed more adhesive to make the waves in the fabric that was needed. 

I added a clover to the jacket made from slime clay, but it got bumped in the car ride over to work so it did not look too good in the photos. The slime clay is like homemade paper when dry but feather-light. Anyway, before that, I had tissue paper in green and white. Again, I applied the paper mâché technique by the seam where the collar and the foam jacket met the background paper.  

Finally finishing the Golden frame

I did some touch-ups and then started on the gold paper around the thick foam pieces on the edge of the frame.  Using hot glue and 2-inch strips of gold paper I bend that around the front and the outside edge of the ¾ thick foam pieces of around the frame. If you are thinking, wait that does not cover the full frame.  You are correct. I cut ¾ to 6/8 strips to glue on the inside of the frame next to the painted background. The variance is from the waves in the cardboard used. It was just a cardboard back that I cut for the background and in places where the box had been bent there was a bit more variance. 

Putting Finnigan up on the wall

Finnigan is now ready to be hung on the wall with the use of 4 command strips. He is exceptionally light and not at all a problem to hang up. I was incredibly happy with these results. 

The Pot of Gold for St Patrick’s Day

Next, I made his pot of gold and I think I will go into how I made the pot of gold or cauldron from an inexpensive witch’s cauldron closer to Halloween for anyone who may want to see how that was done. 

The gold coins on top were fun to make using that same gold paper, golden canning lids, hot glue, a couple of empty toilet paper rolls, and gold coins. The empty toilet paper rolls were used to wrap a piece of gold paper around and on one I cut slivers in the sides to stick ½ gold coins in to make it look like it was an uneven stack of coins. I soon found that to be too much work and then just started gluing the ½ gold coins onto the golden paper. This process took less time and looked about the same. The plastic gold coins were broken in ½ by me. They are easy to break and then you have more coins to use for the project.  

A package of plastic gold coins comes 30 to a pkg at Dollar Tree but by breaking a 1 and ½ pkgs in ½ I got 90 gold coins to use. I used the golden canning lids to fill larger voids and add structure to falling coin displays. I used 4 pkg of coins together which was $5.00, not a splurge. 

The Wee Pot of Gold for St Patrick’s Day

Also, I used another pkg of gold coins and two golden canning lids on this wee pot of gold to go on top of the cauldron as well. I saw this and had to do it was easy to do with the canning lids for support. The only thing hard about it was waiting for the glue to get cold before moving on to the next coin. I borrowed the wee cauldron from someone we had at work. They came from Hobby Lobby in a pkg of 6. I may go there now and see if they have any on their clearance. 

Gold spent on the display for St. Patrick’s Day

Overall, this display did not cost too much money. The slime clay was $10.00 and I have quite a bit left over for other projects. Air-dry clay was left over from another project, but you could get it at a craft store or on Amazon, it is more money than just Crayola air-dry clay, but I think the Crayola would work just as well for this project. I prefer the other because it is more versatile for different projects, and it is $25.00 for 10 lbs while the Crayola is $10.00 for 5 lbs. a few pennies different an ounce.

White felt was $.50 and the green foam was $1.00. I had the green ribbon and the burlap. The eyes were $6.00. Hot glue sticks were, I believe about $5.00. Hat $1.25, Styrofoam face $6.00. I printed out the body at work. The white paper I had on hand from another project. The thick foam was $6.00, and the gold paper was $4.00 on sale. (I will have enough left over of both for other projects). That was it, that I could think of, if I missed something it was not very much. 

Combining Dollar Tree and sales at Michaels and Hobby Lobby, you can make a good display for not too much money. The Cauldron costs more, not included in the above, I will go into more detail later on that project. I think the Cauldron looks very old and not as plastic as before. 

So, get out there, be creative, and maybe make a leprechaun coming out of a frame or your innovative take on it. 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day Everybody.