Tie-dyed Easter Eggs

I saw this a few years ago here and have wanted to try them, but have cringed every time I go to cut up a tie. But luckily my bro-in-law had a ton of ties he didn't want any more. So this year I took the plunge and did it. I think they turned out awesome. Our Best Bites has some great ideas for everything and I also made their wonderful Cadbury mini egg cookies too this weekend.

Start with a 100% silk tie. DI or Good Will has some really ugly ones, they are best.

Then you wrap the uncooked egg with the good side touching the egg. Try to get as much contact with the egg as possible. When it is the folds that touch it leaves a swirly look(that is still cool) but not the print. Then twist tie or use string to make it tight.

Here are my eggs. I did try tying one at both ends to get the print to look better and I thought it turned out great.

Then you wrap them again in an old sheet or pillow case that you have, and twist tie again.

Then place in pan of water that covers them completely with 1/4 c. of vinegar. And boil for 20 minutes. (Note these are not safe to eat.)

Then let them cool to touch out of the water and unwrap. This is that chain tie I showed you at the beginning. I need to get better at tying them, because that light blue part is where the tie wasn't touching as well.

This is the one I tied at both ends to get a good contact with the egg.

Make sure you go check out Our Best Bites if any of my instructions didn't make any sense. They are great at laying it out for you to understand.

Also...we have a new addition to our house this weekend. Donut is our newest pet/friend. The boys love her.

Hope you all had a great Easter weekend.

SPRING BLOCKS

Spring is HERE!!!

Finally!!

(well, at least for a couple days! but I'll take what I can get!!)

To celebrate, I decided to make spring decorations for my mantle. I love letter blocks, like these ones that Jacki and I made, but I'm really trying to craft with things I already have. While going through my craft junk, I found some small blocks that were given to me a long time ago. They were smaller than what I wanted, but I decided to work with what I had! Here's what I came up with.

I painted the blocks pink, then mod podged scrapbook paper on all sides. I used my cricut to cut out the letters, and then did a final coat of mod podge to seal it.

Unfortunately my mantel isn't very deep, so I couldn't put anything other than a few fake flowers to finish it.
But I really like how it turned out!

But wait, there's more....!!!

While I was making these, I realized that Happy Spring and Happy Easter have the exact same amount of letters. So, I put letters on both sides of the blocks. All I have to do is turn the blocks around and VOILA!!

This will make switching decorations so much easier!! I found the idea for the Easter egg garland over at Eighteen25 .

Have you made any Spring or Easter decorations lately??

Thanks for reading!!

Juli

Linking to
Iron Violet Designs

Sassy Sites

Mad in Crafts

Making the World Cuter
Not Just a Housewife

I Forgot that Easter Comes First

Easter Time!!

Hi!! Mother Hen Here! This is Barbara saying 'Happy Easter'!
Who would have thought that a sewing machine could make lace!
This cute Easter Basket is embroidered in the hoop and then sewn together.
It has bunnies & eggs on the ends, eggs on the sides and a carrot handle.

It takes a whole lot of thread, but what child wouldn't like this full of goodies!
Especially young ones that love to carry things around!


More Fun Mother's Day Gifts!

Birthday Calendars

I have put this in now, 5 times, and am annoyed!
When I go to place a picture, I lose a lot of my post.
Anyone know how to do this?
Help!! Please!!

ANYWAY! This is a great idea for those of us that have a
lot of children (9) and grandchildren (21) and can't
remember anything. This was more of a gift for me
than it was for them, but cute anyway.

This is Jacki's calendar. Juli was going to take a picture
of hers, but she'll have to put it in because I'm not doing
this again!

You start by having a 16x16 piece of sheet metal cut.
Put your 'Birthday Calendar' heading at the top and then
split the rest of the board into 12 squares.
Make a paper calendar with all the birthdays on it
so if you have a month that has a lot, you can make that
row longer.

The adults just have their day beside their name, but the children
have the year ('02') beside the day so I can see at a glance
how old they will be.

I chose cute ribbon and then picked cute flowers to match. You
can really personalize this to the person you are making it for!
I chose wired ribbon so I could arrange the ends.

Next, I took the flowers off the stem and cut some of the back off so
it wouldn't stick out so far. BE CAREFUL not to cut too much or
your flower will fall apart! If so, hot glue them back together. Cut the
leaves off the stem and hot glue them onto the back side of the
flower with part of the leaf sticking out past the flower.
Then glue a magnet onto the back of the leaves.
I made three flowers for each board so that
they could arrange them however they wanted.

Voila! A wonderful gift for those that have trouble
remembering! If I were to do it again, (& I may still do it
to mine), I would get colored tape to match the
ribbon and flowers to put around the outside of
the sheet metal. The corners are pretty sharp otherwise!
Have fun adding your own creativity.

Lace Bookmarks

Here are some Lace bookmarks that I have sewn. I have them for 'Mother',
'Daughter', 'Sister', 'Friend', & Love. I had more 'Sister' ones done but I gave
them to the ladies I visit every month. Of course, I forgot to take a
picture before I gave them away. You could use ribbon, cording. braiding.
Almost anything will work. Fun thing to give your friends & family.

Hope you all have a great weekend!
Next week I will show you the cute hooded towels I have made for all
the grandkids. Then we'll start on the 'DARLING' Minkee blankets and
bibs. It's been fun. Thanks to all of you for your comments & support!