Easter Crafts – 3D Quilled Egg Canvas

This is a real lovely little craft project that mainly involves quilling paper strips and if like me you don’t have yourselves a little quilling tool, then you will require a little patience.

Regardless of the fact I quilled my paper by hand, I later discovered while working on another project, that a pair of tweezers do the job rather well.

For this project you will require…

Quilling strips – 2 colours (I used gold and silver glitter)
Small canvas block
1 Half of a medium size plastic egg (I used one of those alien eggs)
Tacky glue
Black acrylic paint
Medium paint pad or paint brush
Mod podge gloss
Super Glue

Optional…
Quilling tool or tweezers to quill paper
Gem stones or beads

First quill some paper strips. If you have a quilling tool use this or as mentioned tweezers work well. To quill you basically roll the paper really tightly and press it into different shapes. You then secure your chosen shapes with a little glue. You can also roll the ends in the opposite direction for added effect. This is easily done by hand but does take a little longer. Remember when quilling your paper use two different colours quilling an equal number of both (I did about 12 of each colour).

Once your paper quills are ready take your half of plastic egg shell and working in small sections apply a good amount of tacky glue then position the paper quills on top. You can really experiment at this stage! Add the quills to the egg making various patterns or glue together really tightly for that classic quilled look. At this stage you can also add beads or gems to random quills if desired. I’ve done this on various other projects and it looks really good.

Once your design is complete add a very thin layer of mod podge over the top of the egg to give it a glossy finish.

While your egg is drying (20 minutes – 1 hour depending on environment) bring forward your canvas block and black acrylic paint. I find that using a paint pad makes it super quick to cover the block with paint, plus you won’t be left with any brush marks. You can still use a paint brush if you don’t have a pad. I gave my block two coats of paint letting each dry for at least 20 minutes between coats.

Once dry I gave my block one very thin layer of mod podge gloss which I applied with a clean pad.

Once my block was fully dried I brought forward my quilled egg and applied some super glue around the eggs edging before finally securing it to the centre of the canvas block.

And that’s it… Finished.

I think the glittery quills are very pretty and the colour choice really sets it apart from the usual “Easter Colours” of pastel yellows and pinks. The addition of the black canvas block applied as a back drop really works well and together they make the most striking combination.

If you enjoyed this paper quilling project, subscribe to the blog and receive regular updates and posting alerts as I have more paper quilling projects on the way including a really pretty mirror I can’t wait to share.

Kids crafts – Easy Easter Felt Art

This is really easy and great fun for pre-schoolers.

The idea is for you to create the felt shapes and then for your toddler to use them to create and decorate an Easter egg.

What’s great about this craft idea is that your child will require nothing other than that of the felt to create his egg. There is no sticking, cutting or mess to be made by your child! Once they have designed their egg, they can simply remove the felt pieces and do it all again! The kit can then be stored away and played with again at a later date.

All you will need to create this kit for your pre-schooler is that of the following….

An egg template (or make one with card)
A pencil
Various coloured felt
Scissors and craft knife
A3 coloured card
A4 card any colour
A4 foam sheet
A5 self Adhesive foam sheet
Glue dots
Mounting tape

Here’s what to do (Note – This is so easy you could do it in as little as ten minutes.)

Firstly use an egg template like mine below and with a pencil transfer the shape onto some felt. Do this by drawing around the shape. Once you have finished, cut out the felt egg shape with a craft knife and leave to one side for later.

Next use different pieces of contrasting coloured felt to cut out various shapes in various sizes. You could cut out felt strips, hearts, triangles, squares, circles, zig zags and much more besides.

Once you have cut out all your shapes your felt art is almost ready to play with.

First though, take the A4 card line it with glue dots making sure all the corners are also covered and lay your foam of the same size on top.

Now your card and foam are attached, again with glue dots attach the green felt sandwiching the foam in the middle.

Now cut the sandwiched piece of board in half and trim down excess if needed (my felt slightly overlapped the card base).

Once you have two halves , put one half to one side and cut the other in half again. Place the two halves to one side.

Now Bring back your bigger halve and stick it to your thick self adhesive foam making sure you stick it down on the card side (not felt).

Trim down any excess if needed. By placing my egg in the centre of the felt, it allowed me to see how much I wanted to cut off. My felt base finally resembled the base of a standard birthday card.

I then brought forward my large coloured card, folded it in half like a birthday card and stuck my felt board onto one side of the centres fold with double sided mounting tape .

I now had the two smaller halves I cut earlier on left. I got rid of one ( this isn’t needed) and stuck the other halve long ways up on the opposite side of my cards centre fold with mounting tape.

Lastly, bring forward your felt egg that you prepared as one of your first steps and use mounting tape to stick it to the centre of the large green felt board.

The card should now be able to close like a book with the felt being on the inner side.

How to use…

The felt board on one half of the card would be the place for your toddler to get creative and decorate his/her egg. The felt stripe alongside it (opposite halve) would line the pieces of felt that are not currently in use.

Now that you’ve completed the felt kit, simply give it to your child and watch as they get creative, letting their imaginations run wild.

The best bit for me is the lack of mess involved! Felt sticks to felt really well without being hard for little ones to remove it! Its heaven not having to mop up after him, he can easily pack this away himself once his finished playing with it. Harley honestly thinks that felt is magical, especially considering his so used to using gloppy glue.

When your felt game isn’t in use, close it like a book, keeping the felt and all its pieces inside and store in a plastic zip bag, tin or ice cream container ready to play with again on another day.

Here’s some ideas for your kits…

Make additional cards for different occasions like Christmas and Chinese New Year.

Use the cards to help your child’s recognition of the various seasons, events and celebrations.

Use the felt game to help your child grasp the various different shapes and colours contained within the kit.

Create new cards together as your child grows and develops new interests.

Add new shapes when existing shapes begin to age, or just add new shapes every now and then to keep the game fun and exciting.

This is a lovely craft idea that is in a sense very educational too. Felt play will benefit your child’s development both physically (fine motor skills) and academically (shape, colour recognition, creative art).

So why not have a go? I’m sure your little ones will be mighty impressed!

Miniature String Hearts And Magnets

I love hearts and have lots of pretty hanging hearts (shabby chic style) around the home. Today I’ve decided to make my own string hearts & some mini magnets out of plaster.

Here’s what you’ll need to make these.

Bag of plaster
Small heart silicone moulds
String or twine
Assortment of paints (acrylic)
Round magnets
Mod podge
Porcelain pens (optional)

Tools…
Paint brushes
Old mixing bowl
Something to stir the plaster (I use a fork)
Scissors
Water (for plaster)

First make up your plaster with the water adding the water slowly in till the plaster forms a thick spreadable like paste, then pour it into you heart moulds.

Take your string or twine and place it so the string runs along one row of your hearts. The string should be slightly submerged in the plaster, work quickly as the plaster dries fast. Use a wet paint brush to cover the string in plaster.

Take an old credit card and run it along the hearts taking off excess plaster to create a smooth finish.

Leave to set… Tip: Placing in the freezer makes this a much faster process. Once set, carefully remove the hearts from the silicone moulds.

You should now be left with a string of unpainted hearts plus single hearts that will soon become magnets.

Use your paint brush to paint your hearts in any designs you like. Give two coats as a base for a good strong colour. Leave the hearts to dry for around 25 minutes in between coats.

I gave mine 2 coats of ivory and then added baby pink to detail. I also used a porcelain black pen to add detail to some of my hearts.

Once all the paint is dry, you will then need to give your hearts two coats of mod podge as a finish. Allow about 20-30 minutes drying time between coats.

Once fully dried you can use some mod podge to stick on the round magnets. Self adhesive magnet tape isn’t strong enough for these hearts as they are too heavy.

Hang your string of hearts from a dresser, hook or handle. Place your magnetic hearts on a magnetic notice board or maybe your fridge.

You can decorate your hearts any way you like. Experiment with colours, pastels or bold. I’m currently making some pastel pink hearts for my daughter. I plan to secure some miniature craft pegs to the back of each heart so that it works as a memo or somewhere to display artwork. Given shes very girly we may even add a touch of glitter.

Love to know what you think?

How Too Make Batty Hanging Glowing Bats

Yes, you do still have time to make a batty bat. Yes the paint takes a while to dry but it can dry as it hangs.

What you will need…

2 A5 Self Adhesive Black Foam Sheets
Bag Black Sequins (mixed sizes)
Baker Ross Luminous Paint ( best tried)
2 Tiny Googly Eyes
Fishing Line Thread
Glue Dots

Tools…

Scissors
Precision tool
Pencil

Here it goes…

Your done… Now hang and wait for the darkness to see you bat glow.

Glowing Batty Bat…

Mini Bakers – Halloween Cupcakes

The kids love baking cakes especially the type that involve lots of decorating. Our Halloween cupcakes certainly did.

I actually won a halloween edition packet of Renshaw my bakes modelling icing in a retweet competition last week, So, I had no excuse but to get baking with the kids.

We used the Renshaw My Bakes Icing to model a number of spooky cupcake toppers. The pack consists of black, white, orange and purple (though green would have been better than the purple, it was an excellent kit all the same)!

My very creative 9 year old daughter Alice-Sara made a fantastic pumpkin with a black and white snake wrapped around it…

Fantastic, wouldn’t you agree?

Harley the toddler is the biggest baking fan ever and at 2 years old his already displaying some great skills in the kitchen…

What We Used…

We started off with your everyday sponge mix ingredients and just added some spooky green food colouring…

60g caster sugar
60g brown sugar
125g self raising flour
2 eggs
220g butter
10g white chocolate chips
10g mike chocolate chips
5 splashes of green food colouring

Everything was mixed together with the chocolate chips and food colouring going in last.

Once complete we spooned the mixture into some cake cases. Note, we doubled these up as to keep them strong. This was because we added an reasonable amount of mixture to each case so they would be big enough for us to cut through the middle.

We let these bake in a Pre-heated over gas mark 5 for around 15-20 minutes.

Decoration…

The decorated of our spooky cupcakes were made up from…

Renshaw My Bakes Halloween Modelling Kit
Candy Worms
225g Icing Sugar
Green Food Colouring
Black Food Colouring

Harley did an awesome job at mixing all the icing where Alice did fantastic with her spooky toppers.

Once the cakes were baked and cooled I sliced them in half covering both in green or black icing. I then sandwiched them together before adding our decorations and a sprinkle of icing sugar to finish.

We covered them and sat them in the fridge for a while.

Personally I think they looked better without the sprinkled icing sugar, but this was the children’s project after all and what they say goes!

Checkout the inside… These were some chunky cupcakes that should only be eaten on a full moon (that is unless you are aiming to put your kids on a sugar high everyday).

I’m linking this post to the appliance online competition “Cakes Win Prizes” and linky.

I’d also like to thank appliances online for the cake jar that I sadly smashed:( I’m sure it would have made some perfect cakes.