Look What We Made: Paint Chip Easter Egg Garland

I know this is a late post, but I still wanted to post it. For Easter I had the kids make an Easter egg garland out of large paint chip cards to go on our fireplace mantel. I got the original idea from here. I think the only thing we might have done differently from this site is our paint chip cards might have been a bit larger, and we didn't double hole poke the top of the egg for threading the string through. We just loved how this came out!

The first step was to have Hubby bring home about 20 paint chip cards from the home improvement store. I asked him to pick out 10 different colored cards in pastel colors--blues, greens, pinks, yellows, oranges, purples--and then grab two cards in the colors he chose. He did a great job!

For the next step, I simply found an egg image on the computer, blew it up to the size we needed, printed two copies, the kids cut that shape out and then used it as a template to trace onto the backs of the paint chip cards. I recommend tracing on the back of the paint chip because that way when time comes to cut out the egg, if little hands can't quite cut on the line, you don't have the pencil marks showing on the front of the paint chip. After all of that, we used our hole punch and made holes at the tops of the eggs for weaving the yarn through.

Lauren tracing her egg template.

Evan cutting out his traced egg.

Hole punching time.

Didn't they turn out nice?

Once all of that work was done, we laid all of the eggs down on the floor and put them in different orders until we found the line up that we thought was the prettiest. Then we weaved some yarn in and out of the holes to link all of the eggs together. I bet if we had double hole punched the eggs like in the original tutorial I saw they probably wouldn't have flopped around so much--we could always go back and add another hole next year if we wanted to. Once the eggs were all stringed together we noticed that the paint names on the chip cards were noticeable, and we were going to have to be fine with that until Son came up with a great idea to solve the flopping around problem and hide the names on the paint chip cards--double stick tape. Brilliant!

Didn't this turn out absolutely adorable?! And it looked so nice on our mantel. (I can't believe I didn't get a pic of it on our mantel! What was I thinking--or rather I wasn't thinking, huh?)

We also displayed some other Easter items on our mantel. Daughter had some stuffed bunnies she wanted to put up there, and the kids built some cute houses from kits I picked up at Michaels.

Yes, we do know what Easter is REALLY about--Jesus rising from the dead. Because of that, I love celebrating Easter more than I do Christmas. But, there is just a part of me that also loves the secular tradition of the Easter bunny, pastel colors, egg hunts, and the season of spring that brings new life in nature after a dead season of winter. So, I love to have reminders of all of that around me at this time of year. All of this sure did puts smiles on our faces.

Easter 2011

We had a nice Easter. Yesterday we colored eggs. We tried a marbled effect where you die the eggs in one color mixed with water and oil, wipe off the egg off and then dip into another color. It was pretty cool. We only did that with two of the eight eggs I boiled, then the kids wanted to do different things. We tried wrapping rubber bands on some and then dipping them and then when you take the bands off you have stripes. Roger wrote Jesus Loves You on one with a wax crayon.

This morning the kids woke up earlier than usual excited to see their Easter baskets. I think the Easter bunny went a little overboard on the gifts--I'm pretty sure it must have been a misunderstanding between Mr. and Mrs. bunny. You will see the kids holding up their favorite gifts from the bunny. Evan really liked the little Lego sets, and Lauren really liked her lip gloss and eggs you can paint.

Evan's basket goodies:

Lauren's basket goodies:

The goodies they get to share:

Then the kids hunted for their eggs in the TV room. We went to church and then tonight my parents came over and we had ham, potatoes, beans, rolls, and a lemon cake to celebrate my sister's birthday which was this past Thursday. We played a couple games of Uno Attack, too. It was a great, relaxing day. But, it was also fun--why not? After all, Jesus conquered the grave, so why not celebrate! Below are a couple of pics of us. Lauren chose to wear this particular dress because the polka dots reminded her of Easter eggs or jelly beans in my opinion.