Last summer, I picked up a deeply discounted Easter Bunny nutcracker blank at Michael’s with the intension of making it into an Easter Jackalope. Someone in my circle dared suggest that I might not get around to it. The nerve! Anyway, either I showed them or their taunting worked, because I vowed to finish it in time for Spring/Easter decorating this year… and I did! Of course, I took many hours to add increasingly fiddly details and so there will be many photos. Many, many photos. Starting with some before and WIP shots.
I had set this guy on the top of a shelving unit to remind me to work on him and by doing so saw up under his jacket where a funny (to a childish person such as myself) artifact of turned wood revealed itself.
I took him apart a bit, ultimately removing his ears, both arms, and separating the carrot from the left hand.
I carved antlers from balsa wood to fit the holes his ears had been in. Later I drilled new holes for his ears.
Anything part of the rabbit that was not clothed was painted to look close-ish to jackalope fur colored. I gave him a muzzle and a chin. The muzzle pieces are wood plugs for hiding screws (I also used those under the base) and the chin is carved from balsa wood. I used a micro drill and some bronzey-colored jewelry wire for the whiskers.
Here he is complete!
The rest of the 360:
Annnnnnd on to the details!
Starting from the top; his hat is covered with a green burlap/hessian. I vacillated between several fabric choices, including a velvet and an ivory burlap/hessian. The velvet seemed like it would be a real pain to work with for this. I thought the burlap/hessian would hint at a straw hat, but the ivory wasn’t enough contrast with the ears and antlers. But a lavender velvet ribbon gave me some “luxury” for this dandy! I like to make sure a project like this has something to see from all sides, so I added this little novelty bird button that I cut the shank off of.
I pretty much already described his face, but here’s a close up with his crinkly whiskers (which a friend described as pube-y 
) and his eyes which are adhesive enamel dots with additional glue.
His body of his fancy-dandy jacket is made from 2.5"/6.3cm bias strips I had made many years ago. I used lacy trim recently purchased from the creative reuse store on the wrists and lapel, two kinds of pom trim for the collar, yard sale trim for his belt with a buck from another yard sale, which is also where the mini-green ric-rac trim along the hem. I’d done something extra on the levers of previous nutcrackers and planned something similar for this one… until I realized that the bunny tail would look weird on that and I was not going to give up the cottontail! So I just continued the jacket and details across the back. The lever’s operation would be messed up with I did the sides of it, so I left it the ivory painted color.
He obviously needed an Easter basket, but I was trying very hard to use only stash and I didn’t have a basket in stash and reallllly didn’t want to make one, so I decorated this little bucket that I did have in stash! This is the 2nd try at decorating - the first just didn’t work for me and there are no pics. I painted a small foam ball green and glued it to the bottom, then swirled this green grass stuff into a nest shape and glued that down. The eggs are from a bunch of little ornaments I picked up at a garage sale, the chocolate jackalope was a white, plastic bunny that I added antlers to by drilling tiny holes and embedding a folded bit of wire, then painted with a chocolate-colored brown craft paint and sprayed with a satin varnish.
I loved that carrot! But I didn’t leave it alone. I cut horizontal grooves with a craft knife, then gave two colors of orange. I replaced the wood greens with pieces cut from a faux plant leaf.
Below the waist!
His (tight) pants are more fabric, attached with Mod Podge, but not top coated, which is what I did with the jacket. His galoshes/wellies were altered with air-dry clay to look more like boots by attaching the foot-part to the shin-part. After painting, I used Glossy Accents to give them a rubbery shine. I used something like astroturf to cover the top of the base which was painted a bright, grassy green all around. I had intended to attach the fence with glue, but the wire got in the way of the pickets adhering well to the base, so I pre-drilled through the pickets into the base then pushed in glue-coated brass brads, that I then painted white. I made another tiny chocolate jackalope and put in in the grass. You can see it through is legs and… he does look a little like turd, but I stand by this choice for the interest-to-the-back aspect.
Underneath it all! I added feet to the base to give it a more polished, “elevated,” look, even though I knew I was going to have the fence go to the “ground.” I used the same plugs as the muzzle, but painted to coordinate with the bucket. The label is made with a circle die, alphabet dies, and a ultra-fine sharpie.
This is almost all stash! I had to buy craft paint for the boots (my hot pink was dried up) and a warm grey for part of his fur, but everything else was part of my hoard!
. Have I peaked at 55? 
the booty. Please tell me this is a Scottish bunny, no pants under that fancy dress? Bahaha!
