Se7en Egg-stra Special Easter Craft Ideas…

We needed to get round to some Easter Crafts… the long weekend is looming, and as usual we have totally filled it with friends – YAY! This is one weekend we aren’t reclusive and we will be busy busy busy… Of course as this looms and the anticipation of all these visitors, four days straight, we need to do anything crafty that we plan to do a little while in advance…

Now most of you know I am not great on knick knacks and I do not want endless bits of toilet roll rabbits and fluffy stuff, that is precious as precious, “decorating” my house. Can you imagine se7en of every piece of craft and the build-up of stuff can be quite detrimental to one’s health, even if it’s only my mental health. So our Easter crafts have been pretty and gift-able (!) “Let’s make these for granny guys…” If they aren’t gift-able then they are consumable and only one is a sugar rush!

That being said here come our se7en crafts… all about eggs and their nests…

1. A Salad Nest: We started with a leafy branch, then we added carrot sticks, sliced cucumber and sliced peppers to make a nest…

   

   And all nests need eggs, in our house a nest needs se7en eggs. So we made some out of cream cheese and speckled them by rolling them in herbs.

   

2. Bead-Wire Eggs: If you live in South Africa you will know that bead art is everywhere, every street corner every sidewalk there are people selling wire and bead art… So we tried our hand at it. Everyone had a strip of wire, we wrapped the end around a pencil so the beads wouldn’t fall off the end. And threaded and beaded away.
   

   

   We wound the ends of the threaded wires together and bent the wires round and wound the other ends together.

   

   And there you have a (lop-sided!) bead-wire egg.

   

3. A Natural-Factual Nest: You will need a bag of natural gatherings for this one.
   

   We threaded some ivy around a bowl and created a nest and then we decorated our pine-cones with whatever was in the bag.

   

   Pop your pine-cone egg into the nest and your “natural-factual nest” is done.

   

4. Mini-Faberge-Pinata Eggs: I have blogged all about pinatas before, how to make them and ideas for inside… and heaps of ideas for different ones. But the pinatas that keep on coming up in our house are mini-pinatas, so we decided to make some glitzy, glittery ones for easter.
   

   You will need balloons (blow them up as big as your desired pinata), wallpaper paste and tissue paper… I love tissue paper, the world could revolve around tissue paper, and finally we used glitter glue to finish the job.

   Mix up your glue according to instructions, I make it quite thick for the first layer and then I thin it down for the next two layers. Tear you tissue paper into small blocks and once you have enough to cover your pinata you are good to get mucky. Cover your balloon in glue and cover it in tissue paper, make sure it is completely covered and then leave it in a warm spot to dry overnight. I leave the blow up part of the balloon sticking out, that is where I make a slit to add the treat later. Also, if you cover it then it makes an ugly bump in your egg. Once it is dry then do another layer – it helps to use a different color for this layer because you can see when you have them completely covered. Again leave them to dry thoroughly.

   

   Now two layers is absolutely enough for these little pinatas, but we added a third layer, with all sorts of different colors of tissue paper, the colors shine through and they look really, really glamorous. Once they were totally dry we decorated with glitzy glitter and our little eggs were done. Now I just need to add the pinata aspect on the sly when no-one is observing… Make a little slit big enough to put your treat into, where you have a little bit of balloon sticking out… your balloon will pop (pull it out!) and put your treat into the hole. Then just cover up your hole with a piece of tissue paper (use some wall-paper glue to stick it down), leave out to dry again and your mini-pinatas are good to be hidden for a hunt.

   

5. Caramel Cup-Cake Nest: This one is our sweet treat! We made a supply of pop-corn (we have an air dry machine for the microwave). While that was popping I made some caramel… equal parts brown sugar and butter and stir away until the sugar has dissolved… that part isn’t for kids, anything with hot sugar is too hot and mistakes will happen and everyone will be sorry. Once the caramel is ready, pour the popcorn into the pot and stir away. Covering the popcorn in yumminess! Turn this out into a bowl – there’s your nest.
   

   But a nest needs eggs, so we made mini-cupcakes using the quickest easiest cake in the world recipe – no time to mess around now! We iced them with white icing and speckled some colored dots of icing gel on top – because ALL eggs must be speckled!

   

   And we were done, another nest good to go! This could be a lot more elaborate – but I couldn’t bare the impending madness!!! I leave the rest up to more adventurous moms!

   

6. Mini-String Eggs: Nothing new in this craft, I have seen it all over the place, but it was our first time and my kids thought it was magic! Start exactly as for the mini-pinatas… Just use string instead of tissue-paper. I didn’t use string, I used the fluffiest, most colorful string I could find.
   

   Smother your balloons in wall paper paste and wind the glue round and round and round and then round some more! And leave them to dry overnight, just like your pinatas.

   

   Then comes the hard part, I was convinced that when I popped the balloons they would collapse. Bravely, pop your balloon and then you need to gently peel the balloon away from the string. They didn’t collapse!!! They turned out fantastically!!! And do they ever look pretty!!!

   

7. Easter Cards: Who would have known… but there is a market for easter cards! So we made some ourselves… with a lot of folding and painting, splattering and sploshing, drawing and blowing…

   

   And came up with these:

   

   And if you need to know how to make these – and you definitely do! Then head over the Free Easter Craft Ebook from FaveCrafts.com

That’s it… Happy Crafting!