Easter Egg Crafts

Even if you're Catholic and celebrating 40 days of Easter, the time for Easter eggs has passed. They've been decorated and the dye cleaned up - hopefully. What do you do with the Easter eggs that you've painstakingly decorated? Maybe you've eaten a few of them, but more than likely they get tossed out. This year, I finally decided to work smarter, not harder. I decided to buy artificial eggs for my students to dye. They were pretty cheap at Walmart ($1.29 per dozen to be precise). This saved me from boiling dozens of eggs - not something I consider to be fun. I didn't have to worry about them cracking and most importantly, they wouldn't end up in the trash as they could be used for further crafts.

I've decided to share the crafts which my students and I did using those left-over eggs. Do I need to say that you can't do these crafts with real eggs? I do? Ok. Don't do these crafts with real eggs. Anyway, they were really easy (if I can do it, anyone can), they were super cute and really affordable.

Spring Wreath

The first craft which we did was a spring wreath. The equipment needed: a wire wreath frame (I used a 12 inch one), a hot glue gun, a bow (like one that you'd pop onto a gift) and some artificial grass. All of these can be found in a craft store or the craft aisle.

First we glued the bow to what would become the top of our wreath. I know they have that little sticky patch, but trust me and put some glue. Then we liberally spread glue on the wire rims of the wreath and stuck down the artificial glue. This is what it looked like at this point:

Then, using more hot glue, we stuck down our Easter eggs. We started on one side, near to the bow, and kept sticking on eggs until we got to the other side of the bow. In all, we used 16 eggs. Then my students added extra grass wherever they thought needed it. Finally, they gave it a 'hair cut' (they loved this part) to just tidy up their wreath and cut off any straggly blades of grass. 

This was the final product: 

 I think it looks pretty neat, if I do say so myself. My students were quite proud of themselves.

Bird's Nest Craft

After doing the wreath, we still had 8 eggs left over. So we decided to make mini bird's nest. This was a really easy craft to do with simply adorable results.

For this one I picked up two 6 inch miniature twig wreaths and two little bird figurines and two 6 inch white foam discs. I got all of these in the craft aisle for just about $18. (In case you haven't caught on by now, I have two students, thus the need for two of everything.)

First, we trimmed the foam discs to fit as the base of our nests. Then my students had a blast painting them brown and different shades of green to look 'natural'. We fit the wreaths over the bases. Then my students went to town gluing on the grass that we had left over from our previous craft. They jut about covered the bases and then added a few pieces onto the twig wreaths. My students chose not to stick down the eggs as they wanted to be able to play with their nests and move the eggs around. If you're planning on using these nests just as decorations, you might want to attach the eggs. Finally, they perched the birds on the nests.

And there you go. Both these crafts cost just about $25. We had lots of fun making them and I didn't have to feel guilty about throwing out eggs that we worked so hard to decorate. So keep them in mind for next year or take advantage of those post-Easter clearance sales and make something cute for spring.