Do You Want To Admire All Our Handmade Heirloom Easter Eggs?

Because kid-made or not, if they've survived two entire childhoods of seasonal abuse and they're still kicking, they're heirlooms now!

RIP to most of our handmade stash, which did NOT survive two entire childhoods of seasonal abuse. To be honest, some of those earlier kid-made eggs got covered up by later efforts, so they're possibly still kicking around somewhere behind fifteen coats of paint, some tissue paper, and lots of Mod Podge. I'm genuinely a little sad that all our papier mache eggs that I cut open so we could put treats inside were eventually destroyed, but Easter eggs with jellybeans inside take a LOT more abuse than Easter eggs without!

This is the sole survivor of the papier mache eggs, probably because it's too pretty to cut:

The kids made these in 2013, when they were eight and six. Look at those little hands!

Complete with a Christmas shirt and chipped nail polish for maximum little-kid effect.

We made the felted wool Easter eggs even earlier, when my only big helper was my five-year-old. Her rainbow egg is a masterpiece!

We "cheated" that day and felted these in the dryer because it was cold outside, but felting wool is an awesome outdoor activity for a little kid. Who wouldn't want to spend a warm afternoon splashing around in soapy water?

And look what that tiny artist was capable of just five years later! I think this dragon flying over the mountains is my absolute favorite of all our heirloom Easter eggs:

That was a big year for woodburning, and woodwork in general. A Girl Scout Woodworker badge led to all kinds of projects, from stomp catapults to PVC pipe weapons to rediscovering all their old building blocks--and how they could be painted and woodburned, too!--to the set of woodcarving tools that the Easter Bunny left them just a couple of weeks later.

I'm pretty sure this galaxy egg was a pandemic project when EVERYTHING was galaxy-themed:

We've also got galaxy Christmas ornaments made that year, and I feel like there were a lot of galaxy food attempts. I don't think any of them particularly worked out, but in the process we all ate a lot of activated charcoal, so at least we got our systems all cleared out. Not the worst thing during a pandemic!

This hot glue embossed egg was a proof of concept more than anything:

I LOVE how it turned out, but for some reason we never made any more?

The big kid and I later used that same technique to make potion bottles for Halloween, though, and we made several that I still pull out every year.

And then there was the mandala year--

--which may have been the same year we discovered novelty painting?

I display this every year, but in my mind it's still unfinished because I want a big white star there on the blue. Maybe this year!

One year I was SO excited about the idea of simply using wood stain, but then when I made this first one I thought it was super ugly:



I actually really like it now, though? I wonder if I've got any different colors of wood stain kicking around out in the garage that I could try...

This year, my partner jumpstarted each kid's personal collection of heirloom Easter eggs with an egg that he painted for each of them and put into the care packages we sent to them at school:

Just between us, we're at the point with care packages where I'm wary of putting something I made into them lest the kids complain--I apparently "do too much," which I'll just tell you in case you ever think of saying that to someone else is most directly translated in the ears of the recipient as "You are too much," and the people it's told to don't feel real cool about it.

But joke's on them, because now if I want to send them something handmade I just make their father do it. They're obsessed with their father, so they inevitably love it, and I'm fine being the power behind the throne.

Now, off to puppetmaster my way into a grad photo shot list that the big kid agrees to because I've manipulated her father into acting like each pose is his idea...

P.S. Want to see what other mischief I (and the cats) manage to get up to? Check out my Craft Knife Facebook page for updates!

This Is How You Hand-paint Wooden Easter Eggs

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

These hand-painted Easter eggs are just as fun as the plastic ones–but they’re beautiful enough to keep forever!

It can feel almost impossible to avoid plastic Easter eggs. They’re cheap, they’re pretty, you can put treats in them, and they are EVERYWHERE. I don’t have a blanket hate for plastic eggs–I'm happy enough to thrift them!–but the world does not need more brand-new plastic *anything*, and there are so many other meaningful, eco-friendly options that are just as fun and a LOT more beautiful.

Such as wooden Easter eggs!

Some of the wooden eggs in my current Easter stash are a full 15 years old, and those eggs painted with the little-kid techniques of my then 5- and 7-year-olds are honestly even more precious to me now than their more recent creations of galaxy, Captain America, and shark-themed eggs.

Whether you’re a little kid or all grown up, the technique for hand-painting wooden Easter eggs is super accessible. Here’s all you need, and how to do it!

Materials

• wooden Easter eggs. I’ve always bought all of my unfinished wooden eggs from Casey’s Wood Products in Maine. If you check out their online store at just the right time, you can even get lucky and find second-quality wooden eggs for cheaper.
• primer. This is an important first step in painting unfinished wooden eggs. Any kind of primer will work, as long as it can be used on wood. I often use the same Zinsser that I use for my walls, but I also really like Rustoleum’s Paint+Primer spray paint when I want a base coat that’s not white.
• paint. Again, nearly any kind will work! I use primarily acrylics, as oil-based paint is a Whole Other Thing that I have no desire to mess with. House paint works great, especially the little 8-ounce samples that you’ve definitely got on hand if you dither as much about wall colors as I do. Craft acrylics and artist’s acrylics are both terrific, and paint pens are indispensable for detail work.
• paintbrushes.
• (optional) sealant. If you’ve got polyurethane sealant on hand, it’s perfect for making these painted wooden eggs shiny and impervious to damage. Mod Podge is less resistant to damage, but also works. But if you don’t mind eggs that aren’t shiny, acrylic paint doesn’t actually need to be sealed. Sealing the egg also means that you can’t repaint it later, and a LOT of my stash of wooden eggs have been painted and repainted and repainted again. Not every wooden egg painted by a 10-year-old has to treasured forever, ahem!

Step 1: Prime the unfinished wooden eggs.

This is a simple first step that will keep your beautiful hand-painted embellishments from soaking into the wood.

Using the primer of your choosing, give each egg one or two coats, then let it cure for the time recommended on the primer’s packaging.

I keep a lot of paint on hand, so my favorite time-saving technique for these eggs is to use a spray paint plus primer to give the eggs their primer and their base coat simultaneously. This is perfect for my galaxy eggs, for instance, which are black with galaxy embellishments, and my Captain America egg, which is mostly red. If you plan to paint wooden eggs as a family or kid activity, it can also be nice to start off with eggs base-coated in a variety of colors. It’s a fun little boost to creativity!

Step 2: Paint the wooden eggs.

This is where you can really let your creativity prevail! There is no limit to how you can paint an Easter egg, whether it’s abstract or hyper-realistic. I’ve got all kinds of abstract Easter eggs, several galaxy ones, two that look like the Jaws movie poster, one for every Avenger, more rainbow eggs than you’d believe, and as of this Easter, one wooden egg painted for each of my kid’s colleges, already tucked into their Easter-themed care packages (along with these treat-filled paper Easter eggs!) and wending their way across the country to them.

It’s a matter of personal preference, but I really like to use house paint or craft paint for larger areas, artist’s acrylics for more detailed areas, and paint pens for the tiniest, most specific, or most accurate details. You can add infinite layers and additional details as long as you let the layer beneath dry first. Use masking tape or stickers as stencils or to tape off areas, and make your own templates by drawing very lightly with pencil directly onto the surface of the egg.

When you’re finished, don’t forget to sign your artwork!

Step 3 (optional): Seal the finished Easter egg.

The only tricky part about polyurethaning or Mod Podging these Easter eggs is that you have to let the paint fully cure first, then let the sealant fully cure again before the finished Easter eggs are ready to roll. In a pinch, I’ve been known to collect up all our newly-painted eggs after Easter and polyurethane them before putting them away for the season.

These wooden Easter eggs are sturdy enough to last for an entire childhood’s worth of Easter egg hunts, and after that, you’ll love seeing them on display. I’ve got my favorites of our painted eggs sitting on my coffee table in my kids’ childhood Easter baskets, and I’ve only cried a few times looking at them.

Summer break can’t come soon enough for me!

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!

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!

I Get to Enjoy My Quilted St. Patrick's Day Table Runner for 30 Hours Before I Have To Put It Away

One year ago, I had the idea to make a table runner for St. Patrick's Day using a deep cut from my Ancestry DNA test. My family has been in America for shockingly long considering how poor we still are. You'd think that people who were in the country before it became a country would have built up some kind of generational wealth by now, but I guess my people were too busy subsistence farming in the asshole parts of Kentucky and Arkansas to enslave other people's ancestors or steal land from the indigenous populations. I'd tell you that it's nice not to have that history of wrongs on my conscience, but somehow they all ended up fighting on the wrong side of the Civil War anyway, sigh.

Anyway, before they lived life in America working all the least profitable vocations and never buying any good land, all my ancestors came from around the Great Britain-ish area. I've got at least a couple of ancestors who emigrated in the early 1700s from Wiltshire, which you know I find super exciting because they knew Stonehenge! I know of a couple more ancestors who came from York, which tracks because Ancestry says about 22% of my DNA comes from northeast England. My DNA as a whole, according to Ancestry, is basically an amalgamation of the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes, with a few Celts thrown in. Ancestry says I'm 6% Welsh, which in my mind perfectly explains how I picked up Middle Welsh so easily in grad school (I haven't read it since, but we don't need to talk about that part) and 11% Irish.  

I've never tried my hand at Irish Gaelic, but my heart tells me that I'd also pick it up super quickly. I am not taking questions about this statement at this time.

The Welsh lineage has yet to reveal itself in my family tree, but the Irish part does track, since I can trace a couple of McClanahans who emigrated from County Tyrone in Ireland way back in the 1600s. Congratulations on missing the Potato Famine, guys, but you literally landed in Virginia, so why the hell did your grandkids decide to move to a stupid rocky mountain in Arkansas and cosplay famine living?

I say from the middle of bumfuck Indiana, where I own approximately 6 acres of property that tries very hard to be a wetland, including a 1,000 square foot house that tries very hard to fall apart at the seams at all times. Literally--I got up yesterday morning to discover that one of the bathroom floor tiles--WHICH IS PRACTICALLY BRAND NEW!!!--had worked itself loose, and there's a section of the family room floor--ALSO PRACTICALLY BRAND NEW!!!--abutting an outside wall that has clear signs of water damage that mysteriously just appeared one day. It's almost like having a whole entire giant elm tree fall right on top of your house is just generally bad for it!

FYI for the future when I one day need to try to sell this money pit: I HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF ANY FOUNDATION ISSUES. Also, I'll for sure be selling this place as-is. I don't want to have to replace the terrible windows, there's definitely something squirrely with the septic system but it still works fine so I'm just ignoring it, and I think there's a human grave about ten feet from the back deck.

ANYWAY. I had the idea for a St. Patricks' Day table runner themed on my Irish DNA a year ago, but as of a month ago, that project still looked like this:

This is Spelling Bee, by Lori Holt, and it is my favorite sewing book. I hog my library's copy, so if you want it you'll have to put it on hold.

Fortunately, I made plenty of progress after that, and two weeks ago, the project looked like this, all pieced and ready to be backed, quilted, and bound:

And then I got kind of busy at work, and then the younger kid came home for Spring Break, so I did not touch it again until yesterday, when I spent half the evening binging The Crown (I LOATHE how everyone treated poor Diana OMG! And damn but Scully goes hard on that Margaret Thatcher dialect!) and doing this:

And now I have this!

Because I did all the quilting literally yesterday, I didn't feel like going to the store for green thread and convinced myself that it's more eco-friendly and a better embodiment of my vow to boycott the economy to use the closest match that I had on hand, which was only slightly greenish and looks frankly pretty darn brown now that it's covering the table runner and can't be taken back:

Whatever. It's not perfect, but it's done, and that's much, much better!

Other than that--and, okay, the fact that I need to do probably one more round of quilting right there by the binding--I LOVE my new table runner. I'm obsessed with how the piecing turned out, and I like the look of the quilting (if not the color of the thread, dang it):

I'm not sure if the joke is too obscure, or just too stupid, though, because everyone I've tried to show my table runner to looks kind of nonplussed about it, and then when I explain the joke--("It's my Ancestry DNA! It says I'm 11% Irish!") they honestly somehow look even more nonplussed, but whatever. I think it's hilarious, and I'm the only voting demographic!

This morning, I got to start my St. Patrick's Day with my brand-new table runner, coffee and a chapter in my latest book--

--and then we hung out together while I worked and ate a delicious sandwich and drank more coffee:

Now excuse me, because I have seven more hours to enjoy my table runner before it's no longer St. Patrick's Day. Time to pour some Bailey's and listen to my B*Witched/Sinead O'Connor/Kingfishr/Pogues Spotify playlist!

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

How to Make 3D Paper Hearts for Valentine's Day

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

These 3D paper hearts are the perfect decoration for a perfect day!

My favorite projects are the ones that I can make with the supplies that I already have entirely on-hand… and my second-favorite projects are the ones that I can easily recycle, upcycle, compost, or otherwise entirely dispose of with little effort if I decide I no longer want them. Because although I love decorating for a holiday, I think I like taking down all those decorations afterwards and enjoying my (relatively) clutter-free home even more!

This cute 3D paper heart project encompasses both of my favorite things! Use any of your favorite papers (in these photos, I’m using vintage book pages) to craft these pretty paper hearts, and after Valentine’s Day, pop them into your paper recycling, upcycle them as greeting card or scrapbook embellishments, or shred them and mix them into your compost. Just between us, I don’t even shred them first, because I am a VERY lazy lasagna gardener.

Or keep them on display forever, because they’re just that cute!

Materials

To make these 3D paper hearts, you will need the following supplies:

• pretty papers. You need enough paper for 8-12 hearts, depending on how full you want your finished 3D heart to look. I’m using pages from a vintage book, but scrapbook paper would also be SOOO pretty. With larger hearts, the paper tends to curl if it’s very thin, so avoid lightweight papers like newspaper or wrapping paper for bigger hearts, or place thicker paper between the glued sheets to strengthen them. Cardstock would be perfect for a very large version, or even thin cardboard food packaging for a supersized version!
• heart template. You can freehand this or print out your favorite clip art, but since you’ll be making several identical cut-outs per finished 3D heart, you’ll want something to trace.
• tracing and cutting tools. A pencil and some scissors, or whatever you’ve got on hand!
• glue of your choice. A glue stick is my favorite glue for working with paper, but with all that plastic it’s not very eco-friendly, is it? SIGH! Fortunately, nearly any glue works well here. PVA glue takes a while to dry and you have to be vigilant to avoid curling, but it’s got much less plastic packaging than glue sticks do. Hot glue is in between, eco-wise, but it also dries nearly instantly and won’t cause curling.

Step 1: Cut out the paper hearts.

For the project in these photos, I’m using an 8″ wide template for the larger heart, and a 3″ wide template for the smaller one.

Gotta pay better attention to what I'm cutting out. Tuberculosis is so romantic, lol!

Trace and cut the number of paper hearts that you’ll want for your 3D version. The more hearts you use, the fuller your 3D heart will look. And the bigger your heart, the more hearts you’ll need to fill it out! For my smaller version, I used eight cut-outs and I think the end result is perfect. For my larger version, I used 12 cut-outs and I think I could have gone with at least 16 to have it look a little more full.

Step 2: Fold all the cut-outs in half.

If your cut-out is double-sided, take some time to choose which side you want to be visible in the finished product, and fold that side to the inside. The outside sides are what you’ll glue, and you won’t see them when you’re done.

Try to be as precise as you can with your folding, putting it right down the center of each cut-out, and crease the center fold well.

Step 3: Glue all the cut-outs together.

Here’s another place where you want to be so very precise!

Spread glue across one folded side of a cut-out, then stack the next cut-out exactly on top of it, pressing down to make sure that the two papers are adhered all over.

Spread glue across the folded side of the cut-out that’s now at the top of your stack, and stack the next cut-out exactly on top of that one, again pressing and smoothing to make sure the papers are well adhered.

Repeat until every cut-out is stacked and glued.

Step 4: Fluff out the finished product so the papers look nice.

Page through the whole stack of cut-outs and make sure that no glue bled through or seeped between the edges of the paper, and that none of the pages that aren’t glued are stuck together.

If you want to make your finished 3D heart into an ornament, you can insert a twine loop between the last two pages, then glue them together to seal it in. I, however, really like these opened up as a wall decoration, or, for the smaller hearts, glued to the front of a handmade valentine.

I kind of want to make a REALLY big one to put on my front door!

P.S. Want to follow along with my unfinished craft projects, books I'm reading, cute photos of the cats, high school chemistry labs, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!