Easter Shadow Box

I bought my daughter the Melissa and Doug Pasture Pals toy many years ago. I still find the horses floating around the house on occasion but she never spent too much time playing with this toy. I have been looking at the box, which is wooden and has 12 compartments, thinking it would make a great shadow box. I finally decided to make a shadow box for Easter. The idea is that this is the place the bunnies live and work on the eggs. I used a combination of dollhouse accessories and hand made items to make up the house.  I have to say that every child who has walked into my house in the past week has been absolutely thrilled by this box and immediately demand that they be allowed to make their own diorama. 
I will go room by room and tell you what I included in my little workshop.

Here is what the box looked like originally. We painted the wood green and attached shingles across the top. I used dollhouse shingles and glued them on in layers. It is a little tricky at the corners because when you cut the shingles with scissors they splinter but I thought a rustic look was OK for the bunny house. 
I used strips of balsa wood to cover the edges of the walls. I just snipped them to the right length and glued them on with craft glue. The green paint shows underneath sometimes but I think it looks good.

I picked 4 different decorative papers that I think go well together and wallpapered the rooms with squares of paper.
Some rooms are carpeted with felt. The workshops have newsprint on the floor, and the first floor has burlap.
Top left corner room:
Dining room
This has a table I made out of a thimble and square of cardboard. The seats are two tiny wooden blocks from the Dollar Store. I purchased the cake at a dollhouse store.
Top row, second from left:
Reading room.
I made a simple bench using a Popsicle stick and wooden blocks and glued some little books on top of it.

Top row, second from right:
Game room
  I made a simple table using spools and plywood. I set up a card house using cards from a dollhouse store, glued on with tweezers to arrange the cards. I thought it was funny to imagine the bunnies making card houses in their spare time.

Top row, right corner:
Bedroom
I made a simple bunk bed out of craft sticks and painted it.
The key to cutting craft sticks without good tools is to score it a lot with an x-acto knife, then hold it in pliers when you snap it, The pliers seem to keep it from splintering. I made some pretty nice clean cuts for this project using this technique.



 
Middle Row, far left room
Egg storage room
 I made a crate by stacking and gluing balsa wood strips and used actual Easter candy to represent the unpainted eggs. It would have been better to make some out of polymer clay but the eggs I made looked really bad and the small jelly beans and chocolate eggs look good. You can just replace them each year. I tacked mine down using craft dots which hold stuff in place enough to keep everything from falling out, but are easily removable.
Middle row, second from left
Egg decorating room

This room was the most fun. I had some tiny glass apothecary jars which I filled with glitter. I made a table using a glass slide glued onto thimbles. If you are wondering where I find all these tiny thimbles, the Dollar Stores usually have bags of them in their sewing kit area. They are colorful and inexpensive and useful.
I made the paintbrushes by snipping a pointy toothpick in half and painting most of it brown. The tip is black and there is a band of silver around it.
The colored pencils are also made from pointy toothpicks, I painted them various colors and tried to emulate the zigzag created by a pencil sharpener. I put a glass bead on the table to show that they have a work-in-progress.
Middle row, second from right
Egg drying room
I made a shelf using yet another craft stick and arranged some foil-wrapped eggs and some colorful egg-shaped beads to show their work is drying and nearly ready to be packed up in baskets.
Middle row, far right side
Baskets
I made baskets by wrapping soda pop lids with felt and trim and put some Easter grass and eggs inside.
Bottom row, far left side
Croquet set. I bought this. I think of the ground floor as their play and outdoors area.
Bottom row, second from left
Dollhouse chair
Bottom row, second from right
Teeter totter. I made this with a craft stick and some strips of plywood and have it balanced on a chocolate egg.
Bottom row, far right side
Gardening room
I have here some garden tools hung on the wall and a basket of fruit and veggies from the bunny's garden. 
I would say the ground floor could stand some improvement, upon writing up this post. But overall it is a pretty cute Easter decoration and best of all can be packed up for next year without taking up a ton of space.
If you want to make some cute clay bunnies to go in the house, here is a tutorial from last week.

 

Little Fimo Chocolate Bunnies

Easter always brings to mind the images of chocolate bunnies!

I have to admit, I rarely find any of the giant chocolate bunnies to taste very good, but I feel they

need to be included every Easter for some strange reason. 

Well these little bunnies look cute and chocolatey but are not edible, they are for play!

 They are very easy and quick to make too!

Here is what you will need;

• +Fimo clay in shades of brown and dark brown, white, and pink
• +a toothpick
• +small knife (like pearing knife) or sharp clay tools

 So first, you see all the shapes you will need to make. The final bunny is just over 2" tall.

Roll your clay into the following shapes, just molding with your hands

• Brown oval shape for body, about 1" tall
• 2 brown flat circles for legs, about 3/4" tall
• 2 brown small rolled ovals for feet
• 1 brown perfectly rolled ball for head, about 1/2"
• 2 brown 1" flat ovals for ears
• 2  lighter brown/white flat ovals for inside ear
• 1 lighter brown/white 1/2" long flat oval for belly
• 1 pink tiny little triangle for nose
• 1 pink rolled ball for tale, about the size of a pea

When the pieces are ready, take the two brown flat circles and attach to sides of the main body shape.Position the feet on bottom, facing front.

 Using the knife or flat tool, smooth the edges across the back of bunny, so they look like one surface. Leave edges on sides and front, to make legs.

Next, position the lighter brown/white pieces on the ears and belly. Flatten them a bit so they become more flush with the surface.

 Get the head and attach the ears side by side to the back. Use the same technique with the knife, so flatten the edges smooth on the back of the head.

 Then get the head ready to attach to the body. Rough up the "neck" area and the bottom of the head, so they  attach better.

I curled one ear slightly, just because it is cuter.

 Again, smooth out edges in back of head, so it becomes one surface.

Add the pink triangle nose to center of face.

Use toothpick to poke an eye on either side of nose.

Roughen up the areas where the tail will attach to bunny, then attach. I gave the tail a little more texture just using my finger nail, so it was not a perfect ball. 

Use the knife again to lightly add "hairlike" texture over surface of bunny. 

Also, the toothpick along the paws, for toenails.

Then bake in the over, following directions on the clay.

Now they just need somewhere to live! 

Bunny house coming soon!

Three Little Birds Mobile

I have a third grade daughter who is a big worrier. I love to play her the Bob Marley song Three Little Birds and try to get her to think positive. I was making some cute little birds this week, with Easter in mind, when I thought about putting three of them together to make a mobile inspired by the song. 

You probably have heard Three Little Birds a million times. It's the one that goes,

"Don't worry about a thing!
Every little thing gonna be all right. Don't worry about a thing"
"'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."

Rose up this mornin',
Smiled with the risin' sun,
Three little birds
Pitch by my doorstep
Singin' sweet songs
Of melodies pure and true,
Sayin', "This is my message to you-ou-ou:"

So, these instructions may be followed so that you might make a mobile of your own to bring some good vibes to your home, or you may just want to make some of the birds to stand alone. They are really adorable and pretty easy to make. Also remember that white doves are an Easter symbol so you could make these using cotton balls and have them for an Easter centerpiece or Easter basket gift.

Materials:

• plastic Easter eggs (any size) or real eggs, emptied out
• wool roving or cotton balls
• craft glue
• beads for eyes
• yellow paper for feet and beaks
• fishing line and stick for mobiles

First, find some old plastic Easter eggs or empty out some real eggs. Wrap some fishing line around your egg and tape it down with masking tape if you plan on hanging it. The top egg needs to have string coming out of the top and off the bottom. the other two need to have string hanging off of the top.

Next, glue some wool onto your egg. Spread it out as thin as possible and you can always fill in the gaps later. You do not want to just swaddle it it in a huge mass of wool or it will not be little and cute any longer. I was too lazy to do this but you could paint the egg the color of the roving ahaead of time so that the bright color definitely won't show through. If you ever wanted to know what it is is like to be tarred and feathered you will enjoy this part of the project. You will wind up with little bits of wool stuck all over your hands. I was covering three eggs so I just did small areas of all three and let them dry and then covered more of the eggs later. This made it a little less sticky and messy.

Make a head for your bird by rolling wool in your hands with some glue. glue on eyes and a paper beak. Attach the head to your bird.

Make wings for your birds by folding decorative paper in half and cutting out something that looks roughly like this.

 The tail is made from accordion-folded paper stapled at one end and glued onto the bird.

After everything is dry you can assemble the mobile. I used a nice straight piece of birch twig. You could also use a dowel. Or, you could hang all three from a coat hanger or an embroidery hoop.