DIY Treat-Filled Paper Easter Eggs To Send To Your Daughters in College

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

These treat-filled paper Easter eggs are a low-waste way to celebrate!

Of COURSE I still make my college kids Easter baskets! I mean, they may be away at school and having grown-up adventures, but they still like candy and LEGOs!

However, while even plastic Easter eggs are okay for a kid’s Easter basket, since they’re used year after year, I can’t get behind mailing high-waste holiday packaging to someone living in a dorm room. I don’t want to spend the money and space mailing it, and my kids don’t want to figure out what to do with it after the two seconds it takes to open it and eat the candy.

My favorite solution? Upcycled and easily recyclable PAPER!!!

It comes entirely from my stash (which means it’s something I’m actively trying to get rid of, ahem–recovering craft supply hoarder checking in!), it’s lightweight and easy to mail, and the kids can pop it into the recycling, sans guilt.

Here’s what you’ll need to craft your own treat-filled, guilt-free, easily recyclable paper Easter eggs:

Materials

• paper. The papers I upcycled for this project are pretty enough to be Easter eggs, but it honestly doesn’t even matter if they’re ugly because the important part is the candy! I used old scrapbook paper and vintage wallpaper samples, but I also had some old sheet music that I was eyeing. Book pages would be cute, or if you’ve got little kids at home, put them to work coloring in some Easter egg designs onto white paper.
• candy. Choose something that won’t get stale, if you’re also putting these into a care package. Jellybeans are a good choice, although just between us, I didn’t really like the ones you can see in the photos. I thought they’d taste like gummy clusters, darn it! Starburst jellybeans forever!
• needle and thread. I used my sewing machine for all the stitching in this project, but it could also easily be hand-stitched. A running stitch would work great!

Step 1: Trace an Easter egg template.

You can of course hand-draw an Easter egg template, but I generally just do a Google Image search. Place a piece of white paper directly onto the screen over the image you’d like to trace, and then trace it in pencil. Don’t use a pen or marker, no matter what, because we don’t want marker on our computer screens!

The template I’m using in this project is 5″ long, which is just the right size to comfortably hold 20 jellybeans. If you want to put in a different amount of treats, size up or down accordingly.

Step 2: Cut two paper Easter egg pieces per Easter egg.

Trace your template onto paper, then cut two paper Easter eggs for each finished Easter egg that you want to have.

The image above contains some Easter eggs made of scrapbook paper and some of vintage wallpaper samples.

Step 3: Sew the eggs almost all the way around.

If you’re sewing this on a machine, switch to an older needle since sewing through paper doesn’t do a sewing machine needle any favors. Set your machine to its longest straight stitch. If you’re hand-sewing, any thread works, but embroidery floss is very pretty!

Put the two Easter egg pieces together PRETTY SIDES OUT! I forgot to do this once and was very annoyed at myself, grr.

Start near the end of one of the longer sides, then sew a scant 1/4″ stitch about 75% of the way around the egg. Don’t backstitch at the start or end of your stitch line, since in my experience this tends to tear, or at least wrinkle, the paper.

Stop your line of stitching near the top of that same long edge where you started, giving yourself plenty of room to fill the Easter egg with treats. Again, don’t backstitch, but instead just gently remove the Easter egg from the machine.

Step 4: Fill the Easter egg with treats.

The stitched ends that make the opening will be a little unstable without the backstitching, so just be mindful as you gently open up the Easter egg and fill it with candies. There’s enough candy inside when the Easter egg looks full but you can still put the paper back together at the opening neatly. If the Easter egg is overstuffed, the paper will overlap unevenly, so just take candy out piece by piece until the opening is smooth.

Step 5: Finish sewing the Easter egg closed.

Carefully put the two pieces of Easter egg back together evenly, then finish sewing it closed. You’ll reinforce those unstable thread ends by starting your stitching several stitches before the opening, and ending it several stitches after the opening.

Your paper Easter eggs are now so pretty, and they hold so many nice treats!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

It Took Me Eight Months To Cross-Stitch Two Things, But I Think I've Got the Hang of It Now!

Creepy Cross-Stitch: 25 Spooky Projects to Haunt Your Halls by Lindsay Swearingen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I didn’t think that I wanted to learn how to cross-stitch, but apparently I just needed a gateway book. Because now that I’m two whole projects deep, I love it!

Although it did take me a while to get there… I actually checked this book out from the library early this year---like, pre-Valentine’s Day early--thinking it might be cute to do some of the projects and set them aside for Halloween decorating.

Yeah... no. I finished my first project from the book, a little ghost with a floral background, a couple of days before Halloween, and the process only really started to click in mid-October. But then I zipped through the finish, immediately started my second project, a Jack-o-lantern cauldron, and finished it a week later.

Here are the things I learned:

1. The x’s touch each other. With my first stitches, I put the x’s next to each other, but not, like, in the same holes, and I had to sit there and stare at them for a while, comparing back and forth with the illustration in the book, before I finally realized how you’re supposed to place them.
2. Counting is really, really, REALLY important, and also weirdly hard? My little ghostie is actually a huge mess, especially all those little flowers, because I absolutely could not figure out how to count all the little squares of dead space to the next flower. It took me forever to realize that the pattern has darker lines every five squares, which made the counting maybe 5% easier, but I still feel like I have to count the pattern squares about fourteen times, then the squares on the fabric about twelve times, then check back to the pattern to make sure it’s right, and then to the fabric again to make sure I wasn’t crazy the last time I counted. WHY IS IT SO HARD!!!!!
3. You don’t actually have to use the exact colors of embroidery floss that the pattern calls for. With the first project, I bought all the exact correct colors and it was fine, but for the second project, I was all, “Aha! I can use these two random oranges that I already own!” So I only had to buy the greys, and I consider that a huge win.
4. You ALSO don’t actually have to use the store-bought Aida that the pattern calls for. I HAAAAATE the feel of the black Aida I bought for the ghost (I also feel like it was stupid expensive, Michael’s!!!), although I’ve since learned that I could have soaked it in water to rinse away the sizing that was apparently making it so stiff. But anyway, I did my Jack-o-lantern cauldron on burlap, and I am obsessed with how it looks and feels. I might have to experiment with dyeing burlap, because a lot of the Creepy Cross Stitch projects definitely need to be stitched onto black.
5. I am maaaaaaaybe too myopic to excel at cross stitch. I keep having to peer over my glasses and hold the fabric about two inches from my face, although I’m definitely getting better at not having to do that for EVERY stitch--just the tricky ones!

Here are the things I still don’t know:

1. The embroidery hoop dented my Aida and made me afraid to keep using it, so I’ve just been sort of holding the fabric by hand. Are embroidery hoops a huge time-saver, and if so, how do you keep it from creasing your fabric?
2. How do you pull a strand of embroidery floss from the skein without tangling everything? Is there a specific end you pull? My numerous skeins of tangled floss would like to know.
3. I don’t understand how you’re supposed to figure out where to place your stitching on the fabric so that you’ve got enough room for it but you don’t waste a lot of fabric, either. I wasted a bunch of the black Aida by placing my little ghostie in the center, so now that I’ve cut it out I’ve got just a bunch of scrap Aida that’s only good for tiny projects, but I had to restart my Jack-o-lantern cauldron because I started it too close to the edge.

I absolutely want to make most of the projects in this book, but now that I’ve got two finished (that I need to figure out how to mount and display…), I’m going to take a little break from Halloween stitching and check out some other cross-stitch books from the library. So far I’ve got waiting on hold for me one with national park icons, a feminist one, a literary one, and a Star Trek one. I think I’m going to be spoiled for choice!

P.S. View all my reviews.

P.P.S. Want to see what we're going to do with a bushel of apples, a gallon of cider, and two Jack-o-lantern pumpkins, one very large and one very weird? Follow along on my Craft Knife Facebook page, where cider cocktails and caramel apples are made, and teenagers are in charge of the applesauce!

In Which I Violate the IP of My Kid's College To Make Her Custom Merch

So yes, I DID violate the IP of the kid's college by recreating their school logo in fabric and appliqueing it to a decorative pillowcase, buuuuuut I also own several pieces of properly licensed merchandise purchased from the school bookstore, AND by the time she graduates I'll have paid the school far more than my own personal net worth in tuition.

So let's just call it fair, yes?

I cut and assembled the patchwork applique D during my mending group's monthly volunteer day at our local public library, in between mending holes in several pairs of leggings, teaching a child a couple of different hand-sewing stitches, and patching holes and rips in what I believe to be every pair of ripped jeans in the county:

I finished satin stitching the pieces of the D later that night at home, forgetting that I still had a heavy-duty jeans needle installed in my sewing machine until I was halfway done so that now I'm rightfully paranoid that the pillowcase is going to rip at the edges of the satin stitching, sigh:

The stitching looks so tidy and the colors are well-matched, though! And if the fabric does split where the heavy-duty needle was punching through it, well... the kid knows when and where our local public library's Mending Day happens!

I also made the envelope-back pillowcase from scratch:

I perhaps shouldn't have trusted the label on the pillow form that indicated that it was a perfect square, 16"x16". I crafted my pillowcase to match, and the vertical measurement of the finished product seems to agree with the label, but the horizontal measurement clearly does not. Look how snug it is at the sides, dang it!

Whatever. Maybe it just needs to be punched some more to redistribute the stuffing... as long as that doesn't cause the fabric to rip at the satin stitching.

Gentle punching, then.

On the long drive to drop the younger kid off at school this August, I amused everyone in the car by reading them posts from the various college parent Facebook groups that I lurk in. There are a LOT of moms crashing out on public Facebook groups about their crippling grief and loneliness, y'all. And there are a LOT of college freshmen, apparently, calling their parents crying and asking to come home before their parents can even finish driving back after dropping them off. One mom reported that her daughter called an Uber and came knocking on their hotel room door in the middle of the night and telling them she didn't want to stay. Like, Baby, they JUST dropped you off! Unless your roommates are actively worshipping Satan, and by that I mean not just putting on the robes and painting the pentagrams and lighting the black candles but, like, actually calling up a physical incarnation of the Prince of Darkness himself and offering you to him as his bride, you really need to sit with your discomfort for at least a semester. And if you can hold out for one semester, see if you can try for two. 

Honestly, even if the kid's entire college looked exactly like that abbey from The Nun, I'd still be all, "Honey, you can stick out a demon nun for four years. She's the leading researcher in her field! See if you can TA for her and get her to write you a recommendation letter for your grad school application."

Anyway, all that to say that I am now following a Facebook group devoted to sending themed care packages with punny slogans to one's college kid:

And along with the Twizzlers, spiced apple foaming hand soap, snack-sized Pringles, and Stranger Things-themed Chips Ahoy cookies, a decorative pillow with a half-red school logo fit in just perfectly!

Now to figure out what pun I want to use for this month's Halloween-themed care package...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Tutorial: Make a Favorite Quote Bookmark

I first wrote this tutorial for Crafting a Green World way back in 2014.

Even if you’ve got a favorite passage from a favorite book, you don’t have to go through the trouble of cutting up that favorite book just to make a bookmark out of it.

Instead, make your bookmark even more special by using your own handwriting to write out that favorite quote on upcycled paper. Whether your handwriting is awesome or ugly, Tolkien’s best is still the most meaningful when written in your own hand.

To begin, source out a truly special piece of upcycled cardstock-weight paper; the back of the bookmark will remain unembellished, so this is a nice place to use an old record album cover that has a lovely graphic, or the box that contains your favorite brand of granola.

If you don’t mind the back of your bookmark being blank, you can use an old file folder, and if you want total creative control even over the back of your bookmark, you can sand down even an existing graphic and paint or embellish it however you’d like.

I think the most pleasing dimensions for a bookmark are 2″x6″, but, of course, the dimensions of your own bookmark are up to you. Measure out your favorite dimensions and cut the bookmark out by hand, or make yourself a template so that you can make tons of bookmarks for everyone in your life who has ever wanted a bookmark.

Using a miniature hole punch, you can either punch the hole at the top of your bookmark before you write your quote or after. You might like to punch your hole before, so that you don’t punch through any of your writing later; I like to punch after, so that my writing doesn’t get misaligned by trying to avoid that hole.

The most important part of this bookmark, however, is the writing! Choose a pen or pencil that is archivally safe, if you don’t want your writing to fade over time–it’ll happen more quickly than you think! I like to use a black Flair pen, but if you’re feeling extra fancy, calligraphy is always an option.

If you want the entirety of a particular passage on your bookmark, practice it in advance in the approximate space. Otherwise, you can just continue until your space runs out. I write pretty small, and I was able to write just about one entire page from a paperback on the particular bookmark in the photo above.

To make the bookmark’s tassel, cut twice the length of the bookmark from embroidery thread or yarn, then thread it through the hole punch and tie it around the top of the bookmark. Knot the ends of each thread and yarn piece so that it doesn’t unravel.

The only problem with this bookmark is that whenever I’m reading a book that’s NOT Harry Potter (it happens less often than you’d think…), glancing at my bookmark as I find my place always makes me want to stop what I’m doing and read Harry Potter again.

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Am Now a God of Crochet. Here are My New Fingerless Mitts To Prove It

Remember how I told you that I could crochet anything, as long as it was rectangular and done in single crochet on hook size K?

I did not lie, for here are my brand-new fingerless mitts!

I am sorry to tell you, however, that one is somehow two stitches wider than the other, and this is a terrible and obvious thing to me:

I still haven't completely cracked how to count my stitches and rows, at least not in a way in which I get the same answer two times in a row.

Before the older kid suggested that we learn together over Spring Break, I don't think that I've ever picked up a crochet hook with a serious intention to learn how to use it. I did once spend a couple of months fiddling around with learning how to knit, but it was quite fiddly, indeed, and ultimately I didn't like it enough to even finish a single project.

So far, I am really liking crochet, though. Reducing the number of tools down to one feels like it makes all the difference in the world, and I like that, unlike with cross-stitch, I can look up from it to actually watch the show that I'm binging while I work. Ugh, why can't Jed Bartlet be our president for real?!?

And obviously how can you know I've made something at all if there is not this glorious cat helping me model it? Spots and I started off the week in great alarm when I happened to notice that she was looking skinny to my eyes, and this combined with my casual observation over the past several weeks that she was eating her dry cat food quite pickily to send me spiraling into a full-blown Cat Health Scare. 

She's fine, though! Two hundred and ten dollars later, the vet said that senior cats just get picky and it's hard to keep weight on them. But what's even the point of working from home if you can't stop eight times a day and warm up some wet cat food to the perfect temperature, mix it with homemade chicken broth (no added spices or seasonings, of course!), and serve it to your cat on a Fiestaware plate?

Now I just need to figure out who the hell I can snooker into cat sitting this summer with that kind of nonsense routine going on...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

April WIPs, or, Nothing in My Life is Complete

Okay, *one* thing in my life is complete, because I finished my foster kid quilt last weekend. But do to various stuff and nonsense--

--I still haven't mailed it, yikes!

I keep doing the thing in which I start a new project before my last project is complete, and that has been going just about exactly the way you'd think it would, sigh.

So, for instance, here's the cross-stitch I'm making to teach myself how to cross-stitch--

And after that, I have at least four more projects that I want to make from Creepy Cross-stitch--it's so good! 

And here are the fingerless mitts I started before I finished the cross-stitch project:

I just need to finish weaving in the ends, now that I've figured out what that is, and then seam up the sides, and I'll have myself a super seasonal accessory, lol!

Also currently on the crafting table are the puff quilt blocks that I'm cutting, and will likely be cutting forever. 616 quilt blocks is a RIDICULOUS number of quilt blocks, and anything over 400 should clearly be outlawed.

Even more ridiculous, though, are the projects that I need to start but haven't yet. I want to mail my kiddo who will soon be celebrating her very first college birthday a DIY party kit to share with her friends, so ideally it'll have a decoration, a cake, snacks, a little craft project because I am physically incapable of throwing a party that does not have a little craft project, and party favors.

Do I know exactly what I'm doing for all of those categories? Ish.

Have I started making any of that stuff? Not even ish.

So yep, you've realized it, too, haven't you? I'll be starting this new project before I've finished ANY of these old ones...

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Am Learning to Crochet. Please Admire My Washcloth.

When I asked the older kid what she wanted to do over Spring Break, she said she wanted to learn to crochet. 

I have had no interest in crochet, and not a single crochet skill, but when has that ever stopped me from commencing a craft project?

Well, at some point or other, *someone* must have had *some* interest in crochet, because I pulled out this full set of Clover crochet hooks while I was digging out the stash yarn, but y'all know how bad I've always been about buying shit whenever the kids expressed even the mildest interest in something. I hit that homeschool strewing lesson hard, and kept hitting it, ahem.

It's not a hoarder house, y'all. It's a hoarder HOME.

Anyway, this hoarder home comes with a complete set of Clover crochet hooks and enough cotton yarn to do any number of crochet projects (it's also great for latch hook!), but the how-to books you've got to get from the library.

Might as well get them all, then!

Of these, Everyday Crochet has the best illustrations for how to do a slipnot, a foundation chain, and single crochet. I've never even seen someone crocheting before, so I really relied on the illustrations.

Side note, but this is another way that generations lose this type of cultural knowledge. If we'd seen people casually crocheting all our lives, then the very act of how to hold a crochet hook and yarn wouldn't feel so foreign, and learning the skill set would be loads easier.

The kid also used this book to figure out how to translate everything into left-handedness. It's like regular crochet, only backwards!

Here's my glorious foundation chain:

I had a rough time figuring out single crochet, so I switched back and forth between Everyday Crochet and Crochet: Learn It. Love It. Neither really made it clear to my muddled mind exactly how to count your stitches or where to put your first stitch after turning, so the kid and I spent a lot of time crocheting a few rows, then frogging it all and trying a different way.

This got frogged, lol:

At this point I'd just about cracked how to keep my edges straight, but I had not yet cracked keeping even tension, ahem:

Couple of wobbles on the edges, but look at that mostly even tension. It's a keeper!

I spent another couple of evenings crocheting while watching TV (don't tell the copyright police, but the older kid also taught me how to bitTorrent, and then we got caught up on Our Flag Means Death), and then Everyday Crochet taught me how to fasten off and weave in my ends.

And now I have the one thing that I've always, always wanted: my household's fortieth washcloth!

I meant for it to be square, but I got thrown off by the fact that 25 stitches long is not the same distance as 25 stitches tall. Is it supposed to be? I haven't learned gauge yet.

Whatever. I love it.

Check out Luna guarding me from the neighbors, who have the audacity to be outside on their own property:

I don't know if it's her age or the older kid's absence, but she has gotten SO protective of me. There are a couple of badly-behaved free-ranging dogs who interlope on our property (the one thing that I HATE about the country. Well, that and the giant Trump flag flying on a literal flagpole in front of another neighbor's house. Why on earth would it occur to you to mount an honest-to-god FLAGPOLE in your yard?!? And he doesn't even fly a US flag! It's literally just I Pledge Allegiance to Trump over there!) and they genuinely frighten me, but when Luna's with me she makes it very clear to them that she will kill them before she lets them get anywhere near me.

She also investigated my yarn to make sure it was safe for me.

It was!

If I was smart and methodical, I would make two more washcloths so I could learn double and half-double crochet, but seriously, this time last year the younger kid died on the hill of having a specific and exact number of towels and washcloths in a specific color to take to college, and to achieve that amount in that color at the lowest price I bought towel sets that came with washcloths, then another whole set of just washcloths, but then when she actually saw what the whole kaboodle looked like she obviously walked her request back, because I promise you it was an objectively absurd amount of washcloths, but just kill me now I'd already washed them so now we still own an objectively absurd amount of washcloths, but they're in my linen closet where I have to look at them every day, and not in the kid's dorm where I could have happily forgotten about the whole thing.

So Jesus Christ NO, I'm not going to make two more washcloths.

Instead, I'm amping up my skills by learning how to change colors, and I'm making myself a pair of striped fingerless mitts. 

Counting stitches and counting rows are not going great just yet, and I'm currently ignoring the fact that I'm definitely making this too big for my hand, and I thought my two yarns were the same weight but now I think they might be slightly different and it's messing up the tension or something, but I'm confident that come next autumn, I'll be walking Luna with the perfect striped fingerless mitts of my dreams on my hands.

Also, if you want anything crocheted for you that's rectangular and done in single crochet on hook size K, I'm your person!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

I Made Greek Alphabet Blocks from Cardstock, Because Even College Students Learn Better with Manipulatives

It is completely unsurprising to me that the homeschool kid who knew more about Greek mythology than anyone I have ever met is now a college freshman studying Ancient Greek.

It's actually turned out to be her most rigorous class--more than the math classes, more than the classes that required multi-page papers, more than the upper-level literature class she took as a first-semester freshman! I took a year of Ancient Greek when I was in grad school, but when I looked at her homework last semester, I was all, "Um, your teacher is a LOT harder than mine was. You should probably sign up for a peer tutor, ahem..."

Anyway, you'll never out-study this kid, and she doesn't actually *need* these manipulatives, because her class blew through the alphabet stuff back in late August, but when I wanted to put something light and handmade in her care package this month, I remembered this set of DIY Greek Alphabet Blocks that I purchased and downloaded way back in 2017. 

Because a vacation is no fun if you don't study for it!

Unfortunately, the shop where I purchased them is currently taking a break, which is a bummer because this set of blocks comes together perfectly.

Tediously, but perfectly!

I experimented with white glue, super glue, and double-sided tape, but the quickest, easiest, and by far best is hot glue. I also recommend super thick cardstock for a project like this, a bone folder, and a good movie to keep you from getting bored.

It really does take a long time to cut these out, fold them, and assemble and glue them, but they came out so great!

You can't quite do the words perfectly without accents--

--but nevertheless, I think she'll have fun spelling things out:

I mean, if you don't use alphabet blocks to spell out Greek curses for motivation while studying, then are you even a college student?

P.S. I post on my Craft Knife Facebook page all. The. Time, sometimes even while I'm in Greece! Come see!

I Learned a New Trick, and Now I'm Going to Film Myself Crafting Everything

I have been wanting to figure out how to do the thing that all the cool craft TikTokers do, in which they film a hyperlapse of themselves creating a project from start to finish.

But I couldn't quite figure out how they were doing it! One creator posted that he used a Go Pro strapped to his chest, which... that's a hard no for me. I wanted something more like a nature film, with a stationary camera mount that has my entire workspace in its field of view. I do NOT want something strapped to my body that I'm going to forget about and end up taking to the toilet with me. Just... no.

I swear I thought for months about this, wondering if I could set my tripod up on top of my table without getting too much in my way, or if I needed something more like a boom to swing the camera over my space, or if maybe I should just nail a couple of straps to the ceiling and duct tape my camera to them.

But then randomly this week, as I was about to sew a Pumpkin+Bear shop order, I was all, "What if I just stick my ring light on a shelf and hold it there with my giant dictionary?"

It's inelegant, and with the added weight that entire shelf is definitely going to come down on my head and kill me one of these times, but by golly, it worked!

And boom, that's what it looks like when I sew a custom American Girl doll face mask!

Next up, I need to make a couple of kite paper window stars in my kid's school colors to send to her in her next care package (her dorm room has a wonderful sunny window), so I'm going to film that, too! And then I wanted to figure out how to quilt a Philadelphia Flyers logo to go onto a sweatshirt, so I can film that, and THEN I want to send my other kid some DIY Ancient Greek alphabet blocks in her care package, so I can film that, too.

And then, honestly, I may film myself reading for a few hours, because if I'm not DIYing something, I really just want to be reading.

P.S. If you want to sew your own American Girl doll face mask, here's how.

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, dog-walking mishaps, encounters with Chainsaw Helicopters, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!