{kid craft} egg carton flowers for Easter

I wanted to make egg carton flowers as soon as I saw them here and here. Oh, so pretty! And quite easy, too. But best of all: we had all the materials on hand. My kids love baking cakes, muffins and cookies more than is good for my waistline, so it didn't really take us long to collect a stash of egg cartons.

We'll be using these as Easter decorations but put them up already to bring some Spring inside. And they don't even need to be watered. Love that.

The boys enjoyed making them, especially the cutting part. As with a lot of projects, mommy had to finish painting the last batch of flowers, but that's ok, it's a rather soothing thing to do. Besides, when was the last time you got your fingers painted all yellow, red and blue?

We didn't make quite as many of the larger daffodil shaped ones as I'd like. Unfortunately the organic eggs we buy only come in packs of 6 (remember, this is old Europe over here 6 eggs in a carton, one liter in a bottle of milk...), which posed a few logistical problems I didn't really anticipate.

Anyhow. Here's what we did:

Grab your egg cartons.

Either cut off the tops to make daffodils, or use the bottom cups to make the other flowers.

You can also just cut the top part off and make smaller daffodils, then you have enough left of your bottom cups to cut to size so your kids can have a go at it with their scissors. Of course they're patiently waiting for you to finish cutting. Right. Anyhow. Finish the edges by cutting a petal shape.

Might look like this.

Or like this.

So you'll end up with a few like these.

Then put your camera away and cut more cups for your kids to turn into flowers. Now. Not that anyone's impatient around here.

Try not to look to closely at your three-year-old as he uses your very, very sharp embroidery scissors instead of how own children's scissors simply because you had a long, long day and you got tired of arguing about scissors.

Be happy and relax for a second looking at the pile of flowers. And nobody cut himself! Yay!

Now, quickly put the scissors away and grab your paints. We used simple watercolor paint from this project and again it really impressed me. It's strong enough to easily cover even the yellowish or grayish egg flowers. And it washes right off messy hands.

We made most of them yellow since we wanted daffodils, but my boys also wanted some red and what they claimed was turquoise. The watercolor being pretty strong colors I didn't really have any pastels, so I just let them choose whatever they wanted and decided to figure out the rest later.

Soooo, after letting them dry and spending the next two extremely gorgeous Spring days with everything but indoor projects, try to find a few minutes with your kids happily occupied and stick your daffodils on sticks in a vase. There, not only are you done and have something up that qualifies as Easter decoration (you know, just in case something happens, someone gets sick or you just plain don't get around to putting up anything else for Easter), no, you also have a use for that stick collection. Not sure about you, but we have lots of stick collections (and rocks. Seashells. Nevermind).

Did I mention I love this project?

So what about the other flowers you ask? Well, I lacked the patience and time to do enough for an entire wreath, but I do have my special occasion wreath we did for little brother's birthday. I just stuck them on that and put it up on my door.

More Spring around here.

Hope you have a great weekend. Happy crafting!
Swenja

PS: Linking up to Made by You Mondays. First time ever!