Spring Chicks

I am moving full steam ahead into spring and surrounding myself with cheery colors and springy items like these little chicks I've been making *grin*.

I had some old sheep's fleece in my craft cupboard that hadn't been carded so I lugged out my big drum carder and cleaned it up nicely to use as the centers of my chicks. I just couldn't bear to use all of my new pretty yellow wool rovings to make them so I wound a tight ball using the natural cream fleece (sorry I can't remember what kind it is) and then just wrapped enough of my yellow corriedale roving around to cover the white and then wet felted them.

I'm really pleased with how the yellow balls turned out :) I was afraid that the yellow would slip on the white as I started to lather and rub it around creating bald spots showing through but I made sure I was extra gentle and it blended together beautifully. For the bottom of the egg shell I used an old plastic easter egg as my form and worked the wool over top of it so that it formed a nice concave shape for the chick bodies to sit in and I trimmed up the edges once they were dry so that they looked like that had been cracked open *grin*.

I was at a bit of a loss though when it came to how to felt a sheet of wool that I could cut out shapes from for the tops of the chick's heads as I've never tried doing it before. All I could think of was that I've seen others do it using bubble wrap or window screen and other similar things to keep the wool together while they agitated it but I didn't have any of that on hand. That was until I spied one of my reusable mesh produce bags! I loaded it up with enough wool roving to make a small 6 inch square, put it in the bottom of my sink on a cutting board and lathered it up and it worked! I think next time I'll work it a little bit longer to make sure it is a little more compact but it felted together enough to cut out little pieces to put on top of the chick's heads to look like bits of broken shell :)

What do you think? Do they look like they're popping out of their shells *grin*. My oldest was giving me a bit of a hard time before I put their eyes and beaks on because he said they looked like tennis balls with stars on their heads LOL.

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. Looking for more crafty ideas or inspiration? Pop over to Natural Suburbia's Creative Friday and see what others are up to :)

Egg-cellent Easter Grass

With Easter coming up on us at lightning speed I thought that it would be fun to share an Easter project that the kids and I do every year. We make Egg-cellent Easter grass with egg shells that we save for our composter :)
Plus it's a super easy way to bring a little bit of the outdoors in!

There are two ways to get a good egg shell for planting in. You can use either hard boiled eggs or raw eggs but you must make sure that your egg shell is going to be deep enough to hold a substantial amount of soil. So the trick is to crack them really close to the top of the shell leaving a nice deep cavity for planting in. Give the shells a quick rinse and you are ready to move on to the next step of filling them with your potting soil. Using an all purpose potting soil fill a bowl with it and mix in a really generous amount of water so that it is good and wet, not just damp.

With your shells all set up in your egg carton to keep them upright start to spoon in little bits of potting soil at a time until they are about a centimeter from the top of the shell.

Once you have your egg shells filled with soil you can take your grass or wheat seeds and place a solid layer of them inside the egg shell so that they completely cover up the potting soil. The last step is to cover them again with just enough wet potting soil to cover the seeds. You don't want to put to much on or it will take longer for the grass shoots to come through. Place your eggs right in the egg carton in a spot where it is guaranteed to be warm all of the time and in a couple of days the grass will start to sprout up. Your children are going to love watching them grow! If you want to prolong the life of your grass you can give it a little trim every couple of days as well :)

Aren't they just the cutest things ever?!
Have fun creating some unique plant stands for them to! The above ones we created by twisting copper wiring around to make a little cup holder and then fashioned some chick look alike feet *grin*. You could make paper cup holders, use your favorite ceramic ones from breakfast or just leave them in the egg carton to :)

Have fun growing some of your own egg-cellent Easter grass and we'd love to see your egg cup creations :)

~ Rosina