First step

Find references, while simple this will not only drastically improve your final product, and anatomy, but also increase your speed. Having to leave in the middle of your piece to find references can break the flow of your work, and if you're anything like me you might lose all motivation to continue the piece by the time you've returned.

Second step

Create a human pose, try thinking of the nature of the object or animal you want to humanify, an example of this would be a bull's pose would be strong, while a birthday cake's pose would be happy and excited. While you might want to just jump right into making your character with none human features this can cause your anatomy to look wonky in the final piece, not only that a little anatomy practice never hurt anybody.

Third step

make descriptive key points of the object or animal you're trying to humanify, such as; sweet, innocent, blue, strong, etc, putting these key points next to your piece while working make's sure you keep them in mind while creating the piece as they can never escape your attention

Fourth step

now it's finally time to start unhumanifing your character, to do this use your references and the key descriptive points you made, think of the features of your animal or object, like does it have horns, hoofs, slanted eyes, frosting, creaminess, etc. Make sure you're on a separate layer and start trying to place such features on your human pose where they feel most natural or make the most sense, this will help you get your creative juices flowing and those not-so-great ideas out of the way, and remember to be loose with it

Fifth step

make sure your lineart fits the idea and looks like the object or animal before coloring, if not going back and fixing things will be 10x more frustrating