Happy Easter crafting and gardening

I mentioned in my previous post that I would talk about our pirate craft activity. However, Easter is upon us and my kids are obsessed with Easter egg hunts and decorating the house with Easter paraphernalia. On top of that, I have been worried about the voracious growth of weeds in my garden and wilting vegie patch. So I am afraid this post is to be about our weekend in the garden - planting and crafting. The sun was out and the temperature perfect so despite our competing goals and desires it was a fun weekend.

I have seen some fabulous dyed eggs in shop windows and in magazines. However, with all the weeding and planting to be done, we put into action some simpler activities. I had to spend a little time setting up the activities for the kids but then I could leave them to it pretty much. We had collected some egg shaped cut-outs, polysterene eggs, felt pieces, shaped buttons, eyelets and brads from my local Riot Art and Craft Store last month. These were all put to good use, plus our usual bag of acrylic paints, craft glue, tissue paper and coloured pipe cleaners. See below for some snaps of what we achieved and a short explanation of how we did it.

For the polysterene eggs, Jasmine and I put them on wooden skewers and gave them a coat of acrylic paint. The paint dried very quickly so Jasmine could easily decorate by sticking brads into the foam. She also used a paint brush to apply the glue to the little coloured buttons and add them on. Alex and Jasmine used the same glue container to stick the pre-cut felt pieces onto their egg-collecting bags. These bags were put to good use in the afternoon when they joined their cousins on a chocolate egg hunt.

For the tissue paper flowers, the kids may find it a bit fiddly so may need help. Cut tissue paper into rectangles then give the long edges a fancy trim such as scallops or triangles. Lay out five different coloured sheets and fold like and accordian or as you would to make a fan. Tie in the middle with a coloured pipe cleaner. Pull apart the fan carefully and then lift up each sheet and massage into a flower shape.