Spring Easter Wreath

Here's a simple Spring and/or Easter wreath made with upcycled jeans.

Do you like to welcome the seasons with some home decorating? I confess in our house we decorate the house for Christmas each year but don't do a huge amount the rest of the year. So when Hobbycraft sent me some Easter crafting goodies it seemed like a great chance to step out of my comfort zone and make some pretty things to welcome the spring into our home. 

I tried out 2 different garland ideas, one with bunnies and one with flowers, thinking it could be suitable for Easter or more general spring/summer decorating. 

To make an Easter or Spring wreath you will need:
A Polystyrene wreath form, mine is this 25cm one from Hobbycraft
An old pair of jeans
Faux Flowers, mine are these from Hobbycraft
Scraps of scrapbook paper and thin white card
Pom Poms - I had this huge bag from Hobbycraft
Bakers twine or string
A length of ribbon for hanging

You'll also need: 
A hot glue gun, like this one from Hobbycraft
Scissors
A flower punch or cutting machine (if you have either of these it'll be quicker but you can still make this without!) 

Start by cutting long strips of denim from the jeans, about 2 inches wide and as long as you can make them. I used the back of both legs on one adult sized pair of jeans, and got 2 long and 1 slightly shorter strip from each leg. 

Wrap the strips of denim round the wreath form, securing at the ends with hot glue. 

As you come to the end of each strip of denim, just secure the end with a blob of hot glue then start a new strip, overlapping slightly. If you end up with a silly little gap towards the end like I did, just start a new strip then cut off any excess.

Attach a few faux flowers in a cluster on one side using hot glue.

Any idea why I thought my scissors needed to be in this photo??? 

To make the flower garland, punch 10 flowers from thin white card. You can draw and cut them out with scissors if you don't have a suitable punch or cutting machine, it will just take you a little longer! 

Curl the petals on half of the flowers just pinching them between your thumb and forefinger and pulling. Glue the flowers in pairs, a flat flower topped with a curved petal flower, staggering the petals.
Cut a length of string or bakers twine long enough to go over your wreath, and wrap round a few times.
Hot glue the flowers to the twine then add a pom pom to each centre.

I found it easiest to lay the flowers out in a line on a heat proof surface and apply a blob of hot glue and press the twine down into it. I did one at a time  - well... at first I did all the glue blobs together and quickly realised that they cool and harden too quickly for that and one at a time is better!

To make the rabbit garland, make a tiny rabbit template from a scrap of old card. You can use mine, just right click and copy, or look online for a bunny template that takes your fancy.

If you have a lovely cutting machine of some sort I guess you could use that.

Once you have your template use it to cut 5 bunnies from pastel patterned scrapbook papers. I went for the slightly thicker papers, the ones that are like thin card. It's a great way to use up some of those little pieces that get left over from other projects. 
Attach them to a length of twine in the same way as the flowers, lay them face down in a line and then add the hot glue and twine one at a time. 
To finish, hot glue a little pom pom to each bunny as a tail.

Attach the garland of your choice to the wreath. You can just wrap the twine round a few times and tuck the ends under, it doesn't need to be glued. That way you can switch out the garland whenever you like.
I finished the wreath with a length of pastel ribbon I'd had in my stash for years to hang it up.

Do you have a preference? I think I like the rabbits best, or maybe the the daisies ...... I'm not sure!

It has been fun to create some Easter decorations, Hobbycraft have loads more ideas here if you are looking for extra inspiration. 

You might also be interested in:

Carrot Treat Bags

Easter Decoupage Book Bunny

Washi Tape Berry Boxes

Upcycled Spring Vase & Pen Pot

I'll be linking up this project at all these lovely link parties, pop over for a look at loads of projects from other blogs

Easter Decoupage Book Bunny

I've had so much fun creating this Easter decoupaged bunny, repurposing an old book.

I received a large polystyrene bunny from Hobbycraft, part of their Easter decorating range. 

She (I think it's a she, I'm not sure why) has been so much fun to decorate. I wasn't sure initially what I was going to do with her, but thinking about rabbits reminded me of a battered copy of Alice in Wonderland that I picked up in a charity shops ages ago. I had a plan to do some art work (still on my 'to do' list) but I knew that wouldn't take the whole book. I dug it out and on flicking through discovered that at the end is "An Easter greeting to every child that loves Alice".

I assume every copy has this but I don't know for sure. Still, it was like it was mean't to be!

I realise that batter copies of Alice in Wonderland might be hard to come by, if you can't find one don't worry. You can use any book, not enough really shows to matter and then just photocopy a page with an illustration from a copy of the actual book if you want to make a tag like I have. 

To make your own Alice in Wonderland inspired Decoupaged Book Bunny you will need:

A polystyrene bunny - mine is this one from Hobbycraft
An old book - As I said, I had a copy of Alice in Wonderland but you could manage with any old book.
Mod Podge - mine was the sparkly kind, I love it but you can use regular if you prefer.
Ribbon
A scrap of card, scissors, brush

Start by ripping a few pages of the book into small pieces. I put the ones with the illustrations I wanted to save to one side and ripped up about 10 pages in all for this.

Brush Mod Podge over a section of the rabbit and start glueing the book scraps on.

Cover the paper completely over the top with glue too. You'll find it softens and has a little 'give' once it's all saturated with the glue but for curved sections it's also helpful to do little rips in the sides of the paper scraps too.
I did my rabbit all over save for the bottom inch and allowed it to dry throughly overnight.

In the morning I decoupaged over the last bit going round onto the base.

I thought the ears were a little bit fiddly, that was until I did the tail! For these extra curvy bits I just used much smaller pieces of paper, this made it easier. 

Whilst she dried I made her a tag.

I ripped round one of the rabbit illustrations that I'd saved earlier and cut a simple tag shape from scrap card. I simple glued the illustration on and then added the happy easter greeting I ripped from the letter at the back of the book.

To finish her off I just tied a blue check ribbon from my stash round her neck and added the tag with a tiny length of embroidery thread. 

The sparkle Mod Podge I used is awesome, no where near as messy as using glitter and the sparkly is amazing once it's dry.

Just to check that this could work using a photocopy too I make another tag. I wouldn't recommend using photocopies for all the decoupage, the ink tends to smudge a little if you rub it too much with the glue brush, but for a single illustration it was fine. I just made sure I didn't fuss it too much with the brush and it didn't really smudge at all. 

Made like this without the Easter reference this could work for any time of the year. It would be fabulous for an Alice in Wonderland themed party, are they a thing? If not they should be! Although having studied it as I ripped it up I have to conclude it is a slightly weird book! 

Hobbycraft have more ideas of how you can decorate these large polystyrene rabbits if you don't fancy book decoupage. I'm loving it, and now I'm looking for more things I can cover in scraps of old books! 

When I was really little apparently I would spend a lot of time doing what I called 'cutting and sticking'. Some things never change! 

You might also be interested in:

Carrot Treat Bags

Spring Easter Wreath

Washi Tape Berry Boxes

Upcycled Spring Vase & Pen Pot

I'll be linking up this project at some of these lovely link parties

Upcycled Spring Vase & Pen Pot

Spring has definitely sprung in our part of the world so here's a simple upcycling idea for bringing a little spring prettiness into your home.

If you are in the southern hemisphere and heading into Autumn, maybe just pin for now and come back to this in 6 months! 

In order to bring you this craft project I was provided with some products by Hobbycraft.

Perfect for an Easter Table centerpiece or just as a fun way to brighten your indoor space, this vase started it's life as a jam jar. I don't know why we call them all jam jar's here in the UK when this jar didn't contain jam at all! It actually contained mincemeat that we used for mincepies last Christmas, it's a good size jar, 13cm/5" tall - perfect for a vase. 

To make this vase or the pen pot you will need:

• Faux grass - mine was this one from Hobbycraft
• Artificial daisy heads - I used these also from Hobbycraft
• A clean old jam jar for the vase
• A clean old food tub of some sort for the pen pot
• Scissors
• A hot glue gun - mine is one of these

This is a super quick project, it took longer to clean up afterwards that it did to make the vase and pen pot! 

Simple cut the faux grass to fit in a band around your jam jar. I made my band about 7cm/3" wide as I wanted a little glass and therefore stems showing top and bottom, yours can be as wide or narrow as you wish.

It's really easy to cut with regular scissors, but it is a little messy as you can see. Just rub your hands over the grass after you've cut it to remove all the loose bits and to fluff it up a bit. 

Now hot glue it to the jam jar. No photos of this bit I'm afraid as I can't hot glue and take photos simultaneously but I'm sure you can work it out! 

Just be careful of your fingers with that hot glue. Once it's attached, just press firmly to the glass for a few seconds until the glue cools down and hardens.

Next take the artificial daisy heads and glue them to the grass. I did a fairly regular pattern but you could dot them randomly all over or place them in a line, whatever takes your fancy.

That's it! Simple as that. Fill your jar with water and pop in some spring flowers. I went for daffodils as they scream Spring and Easter to me.

This would make a great Mother's Day gift too, maybe not for small children to do with the hot glue but anyone else could rustle this up easily. 

You could even just add a grass wrap around an existing vase and just tie it on firmly with twine if you wanted a large bunch of flowers for an Easter celebration, that way once you were finished with it you could easily remove it and stash it away for next year. Some sort of rustic twine could look great with the grass and daisies, tied in a bow, maybe with an Easter tag. 

Making the pen pot uses exactly the same method. 

This time I covered a coffee tin but covered it completely in the faux grass. It was just a case of cutting the faux grass to size, hot gluing it on and then adding the daisies. This time I just used white daisies - just mixing things up a bit!

The tin gets surprisingly warm inside as the glue is cooling, I guess the metal holds the heat but it was never dangerously hot.  

Once it had cooled I popped my prettiest pens in and added it to the desk. 

This tin could be a planter too of course, as long as your recycled container is water tight you could add a potted plant in there instead - now that really would be ideal for Mother's day. 

Just bear in mind that metal tins used as planters will rust at the bottom eventually. You can read my cautionary tale about that here.

I've got a few more Easter and Spring crafting ideas in the pipeline made from the products Hobbycraft provided, plus they have loads more ideas here if you are in an Easter decorating mood now!

You might also be interested in:

Carrot Treat bag

Tassel Button Key Ring

Washi Tape Berry Boxes

Wedding Day Emergency Kit

I'll be linking up this project at some of these lovely link parties

Fun Face Easter Eggs

When my kids were little they enjoyed decorating plain Easter eggs as faces to give to all their cousins.

Here in the UK all the supermarkets have shelves full of hollow chocolate eggs in boxes, usually with a mini bar of chocolate or a teeny packet of buttons/smarties etc. The eggs are usually about 6" high and are pretty inexpensive. It was these kind of eggs that our kids decorated.

Today I'm over the The Pining Mama sharing this idea but as those larger eggs are not so easily available in the US I've been trying out the idea with smaller eggs, which I understand you can get in most countries. 

Whatever sweets you can get in your local shop, some icing in a tube, maybe some sprinkles and set the kids to work!

You'll find a little more guidance over at The Pinning Mama here. I've had lots of fun preparing this post and have to confess these little samples didn't last long, I do like a creme egg with a cup of tea!

You might also be interested in:

Personalised Wedding Picture

My Mum's chocolate cake

Washi Tape Berry Boxes

Carrot Treat Bags

I'll be linking up this project at some of these lovely link parties