Animal Easter Eggs

Inspired by a friends mini egg animals today, I revisited making animals from eggs this year and started by making the rabbit above.

I then went on to make some more rabbits and the teddy and elephant.

I have made many animals over the years, mainly from creme eggs.   They were always my Easter demo when I was teaching as a bit of fun on the last day of term.   I also used to teach Brownies and Guides to make them and also many children taking part in holiday activities (albeit the holiday activity ones were made completely from marzipan with no eggs involved).    So quite a few elephants and teddies have been made over the years under my guidance.

The following pictures are some of the animals I have made over the years:

Teddy

Cat, Squirrel, chicken, crocodile, tortoies

a selection of creme eggs and also handmade Easter Eggs

Chicken, rabbit in a dress, rugby lad, owl, elephant. pooh bear, frog, another owl and a male and female elephant

Rabbit, fairy house, owl, rugby lad, pig, frog, elephant, ninja turtle, teddy

elephant in a cap

The rugby lad

frog

Chicken, elephant and handmade frog egg (which was filled with smarties)

fairy house

 I hope these ideas have inspired you to have a play.    (Hint:  a little melted chocolate helps stick the sugarpaste/marzipan on to the eggs.   A biscuit with a drop of melted chocolate on is also a good base to stand the egg on, although you could use a circle of marzipan or sugarpaste.

A Clutch of Easter Cards

Seven little Easter cards.   Card stock, background papers and Dinkies stamps by LC Designs.  Coloured with Promarkers and Spectrum Noir pencils.

Card for a Blind Aunt

One of my aunts is 94 in a few days and is almost completely blind.  So I have made a card that hopefully she can feel.  I have kept it as simple as possible so it is not too confusing.  

As I gather she is also suffering these days from alzheimers, she may well not remember who I am, but I couldn't forget her birthday.

A quick image for a FB pal

A cyber card for a FB pal.  I don't have her address so this is the only way I could send it to her.

A couple of cards for a dear friend

Two cards for a crafting pal.  This one is from me and was an experiment using some carved wooden stamps.  The sentiment was foiled with blue foil using my TODO machine.   First time I have managed to foil a sentiment, and first time I have used the blocks to stamp on card, although I have used them on material before.

OK it is a quite naive sort of card, but as said pal also bought some of these indian wooden stamp blocks,when we were at a craft show, I am hoping she will appreciate it!  (particularly as she knows I don't do stamping that often!)

On the other hand, this is the one I made in CAP for her husband to give her.  She is quite into "fantasy" stuff, so thought this was quite apt and a bit different.   Hope he likes what I have created, as he left the design to me when he requested I make the card; and hope she likes it being the recipient.

Playing about with pearls

Many, many moons ago I had some rather nice earrings from Avon.  I don't have pierced ears and clip-on earrings used to pinch after a while, but the ones I had had no clip, and were fab.  Unfortunately over the years I managed to lose them.

Today I tried to replicate the idea with some single hole pearls I bought recently

three pairs of beads - two with round pearls and one pair with a flat backed pearl

Trying to get the length of the wire was a bit interesting.  I thought I had one remaining earring in my jewellery box, so I could copy that, but it seems to have disappeared!  I shall play about a bit more and perfect them.   The bag of pearls only cost £1 for each type of bead.  I could actually do with getting some a bit smaller.

A trio of cards

Three simple toppers in CAP, but hopefully effective.  I like the first one so much that I altered the colouring and used it for a Birthday card.

 All the toppers were mounted on 6" cards.  I posted the first two before I took a finished photo, but they were all mounted as this one:

Ballet Fairy Tale Cake

A simple cake for my youngest granddaughter.   She will have one that her mum made for her party, but my son thought it would be nice to have a cake at his house to share with her sisters and cousin.

She loves fairies, and ballet.  Cake topper designed in CAP.

Cake is a single layer chocolate sponge covered in sugarpaste and edged with mini marshmallows.

I am very lucky that Simply Topps are situated very close to me, so I can email a design to them and they will rint it on sugarpaste or waferpaper, and I can collect it later in the day.

card for a little girl

A little card for my youngest granddaughter.   Unfortunately me printer is having a hissy fit at the moment and won't print the magenta properly

This is what it should have looked like and how it appeared in the CAP programme.   Hey ho!

Spring Birthday Card

Yes I have been stamping again with a stamp I bought at Farnborough from LC Designs.   I also used one of their little squares as one of the matting layers.

Image coloured with promarkers, and then lightly brushed with a blue ink pad.

Upcycling

I have been decorating the kitchen these past couple of weeks, and whilst sorting out my recipe book cupboard, I am across my little cardboard file box, that I have had for too many years to remember.  I decided that it really looked rather tatty.

I gave it a quick coat of black gesso, and then using my Pebeo paints I used my new wood blocks (theoretically bought for fabric stamping), to stamp a design.  A couple of the flowers didn't quite work - originally tried them with blue paint.   However it is a great improvement, and I will probably just add a bit more black gesso and re-stamp the flowers concerned.

A bit of weaving

I forgot to add this the other week.  I bought my No.3 granddaughter (aged 6) the loom for Christmas, and we eventually got to putting it together so that she could do some weaving.    

Didn't she do well for a first attempt.