Easter Baskets

 Luckily we have been in a strawberry eating frenzy and I was inspired to make Easter baskets like we did in elementary school.  Very easy, cute and perfect for collecting all those chocolate treats from the Easter Bunny tomorrow morning.  

All you need to make these nifty baskets are:

- Strawberry plastic boxes or any box/bowl you have on hand will do just fine.

-  Pipe cleaners, if you don't have them then you can use some rope or any kind of string.

-  Decorations, I got a bunch from Chinatown (hoarder!) and B2S.  Scored these crazy cute dinosaur ones out of the blue too!

- Scissors and  a hole puncher (loving Martha Stewart's Crafts Screw Punch)

And then you're ready to make your baskets with the kiddies!

- First have them braid or twist the pipe cleaners.

- Then fold the green paper and have them cut thin strips out.

- Punch holes on each side of the basket and have them lace in the pipe cleaner and twist shut.

- Add the paper grass filling and decorate!  

 Ready for the Easter Bunny!!

Happy Crafting!!!

Easter Craft: Salt Dough Egg Magnet

I wanted an egg painting craft but didn't want to do eggs eggs since I wouldn't know what to do with two dozen boiled eggs.  I also wanted a craft that the kids can take home and keep as a memento.  So I thought of salt dough egg magnets that the kids can paint and I would modpodge and glue a magnet on.  

It was a big hit, not just the kiddies but also the mommies!  Only thing I wished I had used pastel colors but they still look cool!  Best of all, it was really easy to prep.  I used this dough recipe from Busy Bee Kids Crafts but you can also take a look at this old post I did too for more details.  The salt dough recipes are a bit different and I can't really decide yet which one I like but the one from Busy Bee Kids Crafts was easier to dry and bake.  Maybe it's the high salt content?  Well all you do is roll the dough out flat to less than a quarter of an inch thickness and use any oval/circle cookie cutter to cut out and then mould to egg shape.  I used a small glass since my cookie cutters were too big.  Then I let them air dry over night (this also cuz I did them last minute late at night and so I was lazy didn't want to bake them right then) and then in the morning put them in the oven for about 20 minutes at the lowest temp.  It will still need to air dry after painting them since they do soften up again.  Also, we used acrylic paints to paint the eggs, will post a pic of the magnet once finished!

Easter Crafts: Bunny Bags

This year my friends and I all got our kids together for Easter a few days earlier since some of us weren't going to be in town on the day of.  Fortunately, I was able to take pictures of the crafts that we did to share them for everyone to enjoy!  

This is a really easy bag craft that you can do with any kind of paper bag and you just need to cut out the bunny ears and the bunny face.  I used scrapbook paper for the ears so that the boys and girls can choose from the different designs and it was precut since I had planned 3 crafts and wanted them each to be short and fun.

You can also add googly eyes and pom poms for the nose too.  Threw in some stickers as well!  I've attached the bunny's face so all you need to do is print and cut!   

Happy Easter crafting!!!

Image from Thainie

Image by Thainie....Click to enlarge and save...

Eggsaster? That's okay, there's always crepe paper...

So many of my friends were attempting this egg yarn craft from Simply Modern Mom for Easter and I thought with the right tute it would be easy peasy right?  I mean it's just yarn, glue and a balloon, how hard is that?  Well as you can see from the picture below, BIG FAT CRAFT FAIL.  It wasn't the tute, the tute was really amazing but I'm going to blame the balloons, they were cheap balloons and the deflated in an hour!  

And so I did this balloon craft from Not Martha and instead of fabric starch (which I couldn't find here and made the mistake of scented fabric starch, the one they spray to iron, well lets just say it only make it smell nice...other than that it was like using water) I used the good old glue and water mix.   They turned out really nice and made a great centerpiece!

Top left image from Simply Modern Mom, other images from Thainie

.....here's the tail

Image from Thainie

Here's the craft in action, the kids all loved picking out the pom poms and gluing them on the bunny.  Tried gluing with a glue stick at first but it didn't really stay well so used white glue instead (Elmer's).

Easter Freebie: Pin the fluff ball on the bunny

Easter's coming and been prepping art projects for the kids and thought I would share this with you all.  You can either use art pom poms or just plain ol cute cotton balls!

Click for the full image to print on A4:

Thainie Crafts: Ornaments

With the holidays coming up, get ready for some festive posts!  Especially to make up for the lack of postings :-) Here is an article I did for a magazine recently on how to make your own ornaments with your child's handprint.  I found the recipe for the dough from Pinterest (love this website) and changed a few things, like  painting the ornament with acrylic and modpodging it when done.  

I actually like this dough recipe more than modeling clay or plaster since it's easy to make and holds up pretty good.  Just an important note to use really, really, really low heat when you are baking it in the oven since you do not want to make pita bread!  Yes this happened to me, one had ballooned up like a pita bread when the oven was too hot.  I would even adjust the heat to be less than 200 degrees.

This can also be baked in a toaster oven on very very very low heat too (always watch it closely).  The rule is steady low heat and longer duration.  Once it comes out, air dry it for a day and then paint.  I was saddened that after painting the ornament it had softened but after air drying a few days, surprisingly it's now hard as a rock!  So if you don't want to bake it in the oven, it will harden with air drying over a few days in a dry place.  

Overall it was a fun craft to do with the kids and it looks beautiful on the Christmas tree.  Happy crafting!

Thainie Treats: Easter Egg Cakes

One more Easter tutorial for a quick and easy treat for the kids to decorate and get hyper from!  This came about only because I'm honestly scared of boiling eggs.  I just cannot ever get it right, so I chickened out and thought of making cake in the shape of eggs and also getting a chance to try my hand at making fondant (have been watching a little too much Cake Boss lately and was inspired).  So I searched making fondant on the web and it turns out it's not that hard.  Here's the recipe I used for making marshmallow fondant.   And here's the step by step:

- Start with the egg,  this you can make by baking any cake if you have time or I just bought some S&P butter cake (sort of like Sara Lee but this is cheaper, it was 2 for 1 and it taste just the same)

- Empty the cakes into a big bowl and mush with a potato masher until crumbly

- Use a couple spoons of icing to bind and make it easier to shape/mold

-  Shape cake into egg shapes (turns out the butter cake was really easy to shape and mold) and when you finish making your egg cakes, put them in the fridge 

- If you've made your fondant already, you can take it out, I like to use a cutting board wrapped in plastic wrap for easy clean up, put a little powdered sugar on board and place the amount of fondant you need and roll flat

- Wrap your egg cakes up --sorta like wontons--- this was my first time but I found the fondant really easy to work with just as long as you keep powdering them with powdered sugar

- And hopefully you get egg-looking cakes!  You can either mix your own paints by using food coloring and powdered sugar, pretty much all experimental since I'm not really sure how the end product will look like but another decorating alternative is adding sprinkles or colored icing?   This is definitely a sugar overload treat, so maybe once the egg cakes are done, note to myself...don't give the whole egg for them to eat all at once!

So now just have to see if the kiddies like them?!  Will post finished decorated eggs, stay tuned!

Thainie Freebie: Easter Eggstravaganza Template

Forgot to add the template if you would like
to do the Easter tote craft.  Enjoy!