Easter Eggs 2012

We colored our eggs yesterday! We attempted to do the Martha Stewart electrical tape striping and marbling techniques I found online. As usual, it's never quite as easy as it appears in the instructions. For one thing, the narrowest electrical tape Bernie could find was 1/2" rather than the 1/4" called for in the tutorial.  The kids had a lot of fun with the tape, but I found it difficult to position it as precisely as I wanted to.  Next year Bernie wants to try this again using pinstriping tape from the automotive store. 

Anders Gets Serious With Electrical Tape

As for the marbling, I didn't follow the instructions very precisely. I think I made the marbling dye bath too deep and put in too much olive oil, so next year I'll spend some time finding more appropriate containers for that part.  Oh, and NOTE TO SELF: Next year, remember to put plastic gloves on before I start playing with food coloring, to avoid a reprise of the lovely manicure I'll be sporting for Easter Sunday:

Even if I had time to get a manicure today (I don't), I don't think there's anything they could do to get that gross green dye out from under my nails.  Whatever -- next year, GLOVES!!

This morning the kids had their Easter egg hunt and egg decorating party at church.  I managed to get one sneaky shot of Lars before he noticed what I was doing:

...And then I got the "Why-is-my-mom-so-embarrassing?!" look in all subsequent photos:

"I am way too cool for you, Mom."  -- Lars

See?  So grown-up and sophisticated, this eleven-year-old.  How sophisticated?  Why, THIS sophisticated:

Anders, as usual, dyed almost all of his eggs green.  If it was up to Anders, EVERYTHING would be green.

Meanwhile, Bernie was stalking around with his camera, looking like this from an adult's perspective:

...and looking like THIS from a small child's perspective:

Pretty scary, don't you agree?

Now the eggs are taken care of, Easter suits are all clean and ready for church tomorrow morning, and my husband is speaking longingly to me of ligustrum bushes that he wants to plant.  It's a beautiful, sunny Saturday.  Happy Easter, everyone!

Three Days Until Easter? It's Egg Time, Baby!

Grammy Coloring Easter Eggs with Lars, 2003

Remember when your kids were really little, just barely old enough to understand that something special was going on when the holidays rolled around?  Remember how exciting it was to set up the Easter egg dye for the first time and watch their amazement when the eggs changed colors before their wide, wondering eyes?  You didn't need to do anything fancy, and you didn't need anything other than food coloring, eggs and vinegar to create those memories.

Fast forward about a decade, and I am starting to realize that there may be more holiday craft memories BEHIND us than ahead of us.  Which is why I'm ramping things up a bit this year, with more advanced egg coloring plans that are better suited to my 8 and 11 year old helpers.  I'm not going to know ahead of time which year will be the last that my kids are interested in coloring Easter eggs, so we can't take any eggs for granted!

I've been trolling around on Pinterest for ideas (you can see all of them on my Easter board here), and I've narrowed it down to a few ideas that are different enough to pique the boys' interest, but easy enough for them to get good results without too much assistance:

Madras Electrical Tape Eggs, by Jen Wallace of Indie Fixx, tutorial here

These eggs by Jen Wallace of Indie Fixx remind me of madras plaid Easter shirts or ties, and they were made by wrapping the eggs with electrical tape and repositioning the tape between colors, an idea Jen got from a Martha Stewart Living tutorial here. 

I like this idea because we already have electrical tape out in the garage, and it's just basic egg dying with a fun twist. 

Another Martha Stewart idea we'll be borrowing is the DIY egg drying rack made of 1/2" foam core and straight pins.  Ingenious!  I've always hated the ugly blemishes you get on the eggs if you set them on a paper towel or back in the egg carton to dry, and with multi-dye techniques you'd get multiple ugly splotches, one for each color. 

The second technique I want to try this year is marbleized eggs, another Martha Stewart project (instructions here).  This is another method that builds on basic egg dying.  First you color the eggs the way you normally would and allow them to dry, and then you swirl them in a second shallow dye bath in a contrasting color, with olive oil drizzled in the dye bath.  I'm picturing this kind of like how they drizzle the olive oil and balsamic vinegar on a plate at the Olive Garden when they bring the bread out.  Is that the Olive Garden, or the Macaroni Grill?  It's one of those Italian restaurant chains where Bernie refuses to eat because he always gets an upset stomach every time we go there. 

Back to the eggs!

Eggs Embellished with Temporary Tattoos

One more idea to throw into the mix: In the past, when they were much younger, I tried giving the boys stickers to embellish their Easter eggs, but I seem to recall they just fell off, resulting in disappointment and tears.  I found this photo from Tina Roth Eisenberg of SwissMiss showing plain brown eggs decorated with temporary tattoos.  Lars LOVES temporary tattoos, so much so that he'd plaster them all over his face if we allowed it.  My boys probably won't be excited about sweet little bunny rabbits, but maybe I can find some fake tattoos that will fulfil the twin objectives of arousing little boys' enthusiasm while respecting that this is, after all, a religious holiday (there will be NO SKULLS AND CROSS BONES on our Easter eggs.  Period!).

If Bernie ever comes back from getting his oil changed, I'll head out to round up supplies for our Easter eggs.  The boys have an Easter egg hunt and craft party at church on Saturday, so that means I need to dye four dozen eggs today and have everything ready for decorating them on Friday.  I'll try to remember to post pictures!

Happy Easter!

So, Who Wants to be a Fabric Designer?

Custom Funky Door Fabric, Created Online in 3 minutes (don't remember where I got the photo)

Have you ever been searching for something on the Internet and wandered off on a tangent, which led you to another distraction, which led you to an exciting discovery?  I have no idea what I was originally looking for online this morning, but I stumbled onto an affordable resource for custom fabric printing, even in small quantities.  Starting at just $16.20 per yard, with discounts on orders of 20 yards or more, Spoonflower can unleash the inner fabric designer in all of us.  You can order as little as a fat quarter of your custom design on a quilting weight cotton, or you can order 15 yards of your design printed onto a cotton/silk fabric for drapery panels, or you can order a half yard of your custom fabric creation printed on organic cotton interlock for a pair of adorable toddler pajama bottoms; other fabric options are available as well.  Are you excited yet?

To create the fabric design shown above, all I did was upload a photo (regrettably, a photo that I copied from somewhere and plopped on my desktop weeks ago -- I have no idea where I got that turquoise door picture.  If anyone recognizes it, let me know!).  Once the picture uploads, you get a preview and you get to manipulate the way the design repeats.  I think I just did a half drop repeat.  I didn't crop the picture or mess with it in any way, because I have so many other things that I should be doing right now. 

I actually took pictures of quite a few interesting doors when I was in Paris last September, without having any idea what I was going to do with them.  How cool would it be to create custom fabric from each photo in fat quarter quantities for a special Doorways of Paris quilt? 

I can think of so many cool custom fabric ideas now that I've found this resource:

1. Your kids' artwork

2. Your kids' scary school photos

3. Product photography from manufacturer's web sites (for personal use only).  How cool would it be to tile a photo of your favorite gorgeous chair or chandelier?

4. Your business logo

5. Pictures of your dogs

6. Pictures of your annoyed, sleepy husband sticking his tongue out at you -- you know, the pictures you promised you had erased 

Tiffany Diamond Rings, images from Tiffany

I used images of "important" diamond rings from Tiffany ("important" seems to mean $600K and up) to create this virtual fabric.  There are links on the Spoonflower web site to information about how to prepare and manipulate your photography or artwork in a variety of software programs before using them for a custom fabric design, and I'm sure I could figure out how to change the background color, etc., but for now all I'm doing is uploading a photo and trying out different repeat options.  How fun would the Tiffany bling fabric be in a girly "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" quilt?

Okay, back to work for me.  I've got laundry going on in the background, I haven't eaten lunch yet, and before I know it I'll be headed to pick up the boys and begin the Cruel Parental Homework Torture phase of my day.  Time flies when you're playing on the Internet instead of working, doesn't it?

Merry Christmas 2011: The Christmas Card Post

Last year I indulged in misty-eyed nostalgia for what I consider to be an endangered species, the vintage Christmas card that is actually a card rather than a photo postcard, and which actually wishes the recipient a Merry Christmas rather than a bland, politically-correct Happy Holiday.  If you're so young that you don't remember what real Christmas cards are supposed to look like, you can read last year's Christmas card post and see some beautiful examples of vintage Christmas cards here. 

Christmas Past, at least the way we remember or imagine it from the present, was simpler, less commercialized, more personal and more family and community oriented than it is today.  It was A Miracle on 34th Street, White Christmas, and It's A Wonderful Life.  This year, however, I'm sharing this 1952 Ronald Reagan Christmas ad for Chesterfield cigarettes as a reminder that, then as now, Hollywood is in the dream business, and films are magical mirrors that show audiences an idealized reflection of their society.  I mean, seriously?!  When I romanticized those magical 1950s era Christmases from The Good Old Days, I wasn't thinking about cartons of "Christmas card" cigarettes under the tree!!

Yes, I still miss real Christmas cards and I still feel annoyed rather than touched by the cards I receive from the HV/AC company and the dry cleaner (wishing me prosperity so I can continue to shop with them). If you are one of my few remaining family or friends who sends me a Christmas card with a pretty Christmas picture on the front, please know that I am absolutely delighted to receive it, even if you just signed your name and didn't have time to write a Christmas letter.  Perhaps the newer tradition of Christmas photocards is one that our children and grandchildren may look back on fondly as what Christmas cards "should" be.  With families and friends as spread out across the globe as they are today, there are some smiling faces we only get to see on Facebook and Christmas cards anymore.  I also realize that it takes a lot of effort and advance planning for families to get that perfect holiday photo and have the cards printed up on time for Christmas (is that what you people were working on while I was obsessing over turkey and side dishes last month?).

Christmas Card Ornament, photo courtesy of ScoutyGirl

If I do get any old-style Christmas cards this year, I'm saving every single one of them.  My little sister reminded me the other day that we used to recycle Christmas cards for an ornament craft project at my grandmother's house, and I found a tutorial that refreshed my memory on how to do it right here at ScoutyGirl.  In fact, I just had a flash of inspiration for this project -- if I don't have enough Christmas cards to cut up, why not print my own?  All those images of vintage Christmas cards that I tracked down and posted about last year right here could be printed on heavy card stock and used to supplement the cards that come in the mail.  There are loads of images on the internet that would be perfect for this.  I can't wait to do this with my kids over Christmas break -- thanks for the idea, Janice the Manice!

By the way, if you haven't done your Christmas cards yet, there's still time.  I just ordered mine online; with express shipping I should have them by the middle of next week.  (My favorite online sources for Christmas cards are the museum shops at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago).  I'll probably be watching those old Christmas movies while I sign and address my Christmas cards, but I'll try to remember that the best Christmas is always THIS Christmas, this gift of time off from work, school, and other obligations when we can relax with our loved ones and be reminded of what really matters.  Yesterday we had The Santa Claus 2 on while I was mixing up cookie dough, the one where Tim Allen has to get married by Christmas Eve or else he can't be Santa anymore.  When they got to the proposal scene and Santa said that Christmas would end if the lady didn't say yes, Anders piped up, "No it wouldn't!  Jesus would still come without Santa!"  Yay, Anders!

Whether your family celebrates Christmas, Hanukkah, or another holiday at this time of year, may God bless you with his gifts of love, forgiveness, and salvation and keep you safe and healthy.  Merry Christmas!