My Guide To Getting Crafty For Easter

Easter is one of my favourite holidays of the year. Come on, I mean we get loads of chocolate. But also because there just seems to be a great emphasis on being crafty at Easter and this gives the boys and I an excuse to get sticky with the PVA glue.

To start off with our Easter craft activities, Hobbycraft sent us out a bundle of items to get us on our way. From a Make Your Own Foam Easter Chick Crown Kit and a Make Your Own Large Felt Easter Chick right to the funky Decopatch Mache Jack Rabbit Trophy which gave you the added extra of being able to add your own flair to it. 

The Make Your Own Foam Easter Chick Crown Kit is perfect for younger children as it needs to cutting or messiness, and apart from sorting where you want everything to go, it is very easy for little ones to do on their own. The crown and shapes are ready cut out and the shapes also have sticky backs, so it’s mainly a case of deciding where you want to put everything, and away you go. 

Then we come to the Make Your Own Large Felt Easter Chick which not only lets you child create their own little Easter friend, but it is also a starting point in teaching your child to stitch too. 

Like with the one above, everything is already cut to size and the instructions tell you exactly how you should do it to finish with it looks like theirs, it’s just a case of stitching the edge of the chick and then glueing everything in place. 

Thomas has absolutely loved learning to stitch and creating his own chick. I like that not only do children get to collect these craft sets that will give them something to do, give them a creation when they’re finished but also teaches them a life skill too. 

And hen we come on decopatch which my children adored doing. With the help of the Decopatch Mache Jack Rabbit Trophy, some PVA glue and 3 different sets of decopatch and deco-mache paper, the boys were able to make their very own wall ornament. 

So, how this works is very simple, you rip up pieces of the paper and stick them on to your ornament in a random order. You are best off using PVA glue for this as it dries clear and will give it a nice shine to finish but it is quite simple really. 

You could decide to use one colour and patch it together or multiple. The boys decided to mix them all as ‘that’s funky’ according to them, and they created their very own masterpiece which they can now show off on their bedroom wall. 

When Tiger Sheds challenged us to create an Easter “ornament from the outdoors”, we knew that this would be a great time to get out and explore our surroundings whilst trying to figure out what we could create with an Easter theme.

We decided on doing an Easter wreath. Collecting some leaves from the bush in our garden, we got to work with making our Easter themed wreath. To start, and make the outline, I got a piece of A3 paper and drew round a dinner plate and cut it out. To make the inner circle, I placed a side plate on the circle sheet and drew around that which gave me the smaller, inner circle. I then cute this inner bit our to leave us with a ring of paper.

Onto this, the boys built up layers of leaves, sticking them on with PVA glue for a rustic feel. We then got to work making it look suitable for Easter with some paper eggs glued on, some mini-eggs too, and then a cute bunny which we added to the bottom and decorated just to finish it off. And there you have it, our Easter “ornament from the outdoors”.

Of course, you can now also get craft kits for everything. Asda do a whole range of items that are perfect for if you’re making up your own little hamper or are doing a egg hunt. The super cute Felt Chick Basket would make an adorable holder for all those little eggs your little ones hunt out.

Whereas the Hanging Chicks and the Mini Bunnies make perfect little decorations to have around the house at Easter with the added extra of being able to create your own too with the Paper Chains set. You just simply make a loop with one of the colours and stick the edges together with a bit of glue. Then keep threading the different colours through and sticking down, until you are left with a long chain.

It’s amazing what you can come up with and create with a few craft items and some imagination. But then it comes to the big clean up. After all that glueing and sticking, painting and colouring, spillage is almost a given. 

For our family wash, I use Ecover Non-Bio Concentrated Laundry Liquid as not only does it tackle tough stains even at 30 degrees but this plant-based formula is gentle on sensitive skin.

It provides brilliant results on my whites, coloureds and all fabric types, even the dreaded school uniform after a bad weather day playing in the playground. I am always a bit sceptical of using non-bio as usually it doesn’t work very very at getting off those though stains, but Ecover have done a fab job with this, cleaning away those pesky stains without a fuss.

I also find it great that I can just throw in any clothing that has been painted or glued by the boys, and it will come off, even in a 30 degree wash which means it’s not only saving electricity but my time also.

When it comes to washing Joseph’s clothing, I use Simply Pure which is 100% allergen and fragrance free soluble laundry powder sachets designed to clean, sanitise and eliminate bacteria from clothing making it ideal for Eczema sufferers. They are also Vegan friendly and approved by the National Eczema Society.

They come in a little sachet/soft-tab which you just chuck into the washers drawer and off you go with the wash. The powder leaves no residue on Joseph’s clothing and they wash really well without affected his skin at all.

So there you have it, my guide to getting crafty this Easter, and the clean up afterwards!