Easter Crafts – Cute Bunny Ears

Happy Easter Everyone

Here’s how to make yourselves or your children some rather cute bunny ears.

You’ll need
1 Alice Band
9 Pink Pipe Cleaners
4 Purple Pipe Cleaners
1 Sheet Pink Felt
1 Sheet White Felt
Piece of Self Adhesive foam

Ok… First…

Then…

And Finally… Pop them on your head and look super cute.

Enjoy. X

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!

Tutorial – Easter Baskets With A difference

I love Easter, Spring is in the air and Daffodils can be seen sprouting from the ground beside that of the Bluebells. Its the day you’re technically allowed to scoff our faces with chocolate and not feel so guilty about doing so!

However, lets be honest, it isn’t the healthiest tradition is it? And as a woman, I always beat myself up a little following the Easter Binge. Nonetheless, there are many other cute gift ideas that can be given at Easter, ones that don’t actually involve any chocolate at all! Whats more, you can actually craft many of these gifts yourselves making them that bit more personalised and special.

I made a cute Easter basket that I filled with decorated eggs and then shared here on the blog last year.

Today I’m creating an Easter basket of a different kind! One a bit different from the norm. I guess you could call it a bag, though its Easter themed all the same.

So here it is!

A very cute Box bag decorated with spring and Easter in mind, then filled with cute little treats for my daughter.

To make your own its really very simple, all you’re need is…

1x Paper Mâché box bag (Hobbycraft)
1x Sheet of decorative paper (A4)
White String (Ikea)
1x Birdie tag with button detail (dotcomgiftshop)
2x Cute paper jar lid covers that are identical to one another (dotcomgiftshop)
Mod Podge Gloss (Hobbycraft)
Pink Paint (pastel pink is best)
1x Sheet of yellow felt ( Baker Ross ltd)
1x Sheet of yellow tissue paper
A few glue dots

Tools…
Paint and glue brushes
Scissors

Other items include gifts to place in your box bag. I’ve filled mine with little bits like bath lotions and bubbles, mini nail polishes and bangles.

First paint the sides of your box in pink paint. Also paint the edging of the box. Leave to dry and then apply a second coat.

Cut off the boxes paper handles and discard.

Next cut you’re decorative A4 paper in half (I’ve used a nice sheet of pastel Polkadot paper in A4 size). Now line it up to the top edge of the box, roughly trim excess paper but be careful not to trim too short. Once you have applied the paper we can then trim of any remaining excess. To apply the paper, paste on a coat of mod podge gloss and apply the paper to the boxes front. Add a second coat of mod podge over the top and leave for 30 minutes to dry. Don’t worry about applying the paper over the holes that housed the paper handles, this is fine, we will address this later.

Once dry repeat the entire process on the opposite side of your box.

Once you have papered both sides of the box and it is dry, hard and shiny, trim off any excess paper to make your box tidy.

Now take one off the jam jar covers. You should have two identical paper covers, one for either side of your box (mine has this cute birdie in the centre and came in an assortment of jar preserving labels from dotcomgiftshop). In the same way you applied your paper to your box (glue both on the surface and over the top off the paper) repeat for both sides and leave for half an hour to dry.

Once this has completely dried use the point of a thin paint brush to push through the paper and expose the holes for the handles. As the inner section of the box has not yet been covered these are easily located. Do this for all four of your holes.

Now cut some yellow felt and lay it at the bottom of the box. Repeat for the two larger inner sides only this time secure with a few glue dots on each.

At this stage don’t worry about the remaining two sides (smaller inner sides)

Now take a sharp pointed craft tool, the point of a sharp pair of scissors or even a sharp pencil to push through the exposed holes penetrating the felt lining on the inner section of the box.

Now you will need to cut 2 white pieces of string (mine is from Ikea). Cut these to a size that suits. I’ve opted for short handles. Simply thread the string through the holes so one piece goes from one side of the box to the other (as the original handles were before removing). Do this for both pieces only on one piece, tread through one hole and before treading through the opposite side, tread on your little cute birdie tag so the decorative side is seen when it lays flat against your box. Tie all the ends of the string so the handles are secure. Make sure the string attached to your little birdie tag is on the piece of string you’ve tied off to ensure it doesn’t move around the handle freely.

Lastly cut your yellow tissue paper and use to bulk out the inner sections of the box while also covering the remaining sides. This will also keep your surprise gifts cushioned and ever so slightly concealed from little wondering eye.

Cute Easter Surprise wouldn’t you agree?

How Too Make A Tissue Paper Googly Eye Wreath

So here’s our second Halloween craft project of the day.

As promised these are last minute craft ideas that don’t cost very much money to create. 🙂

This spooky tissue paper googly eye wreath took less than 30 minutes to make.

You will need…
Large Polystyrene Ring
4 Large Sheets (Orange Tissue Paper)
4 Large Sheets (Green Tissue Paper)
Dress Pins
Small Sheet Felt (spooky design)
Pack of Googly Eyes (self adhesive)
Pack of Sticky Gems (Small, Self adhesive)
2m Satin Orange Ribbon

Tools…

Just Scissors

All done… I think it looks pretty spook-Tastic for a load of tissue paper, how about you?