An easy spring craft: golden eggs in peat pot "baskets"

Easter seems like it's coming so early this year!  Why is it in March?  I don't get it.  Half the country is still buried in snow, and even here in normally sunny SoCal the weather doesn't quite feel like spring yet.  At any rate, I'm not ready for it.  I can't get on board with the pastels right now, but I am feeling very drawn to mossy greens, clean whites and earthy textures.

I wanted to share a simple spring Easter craft with you today...

 

Many years ago some good friends of mine (hi Ernie & Debbi!) gave me something similar and I loved it.  I decided to make a few more.  It's easy.
Here's what you need:

• large plastic eggs
• aluminum foil
• gold spray paint
• small peat pots
• Mod Podge (I used both Matte and Sparkle )
• an image or embellishment
• green sheet moss (remember, everyone should have some)
• ribbon

This 15-pack of peat pots at Lowe's for less than $2.  Take an ice pick and poke a hole on each side of the pot.  Thread some ribbon through one of the holes and make a knot.  Do the same thing with the other end of the ribbon for the other side.

I had this cool butterfly patterned paper that I wanted to use.  Some of the butterflies were a little Silence of the Lambs-ish, but I found a colorful one and cut him out with an X-acto knife.

Once it was cut out, I applied Matte Mod Podge to the back side of the butterfly and pressed it on to the peat pot.  When dry, I carefully went over it with the Sparkle Mod Podge.  I wanted the butterfly to have a little sparkle, but didn't want to affect the texture or look of the pot in any way, so I was very careful when I applied it.  (Staying in the lines, so to speak.)

For the golden egg, I wanted it to kind of look like a big foil wrapped chocolate egg.

Take a large piece of aluminum foil, crumple it up, then smooth it out again.  Cover a plastic egg with Mod Podge (whatever kind you have is fine) and then smooth the foil over the egg.  You might need to do this in a few pieces, but no big deal.  When the egg is covered, take it outside and lightly spray it with a gold metallic spray paint.  (If you want it to look like you shoved baked potatoes in your peat pots, then by all means feel free to leave them silver.)
Put a little filler in the peat pot.  I used a few spare plastic egg parts.  No one is going to see it, so it doesn't matter what you use.

Tuck some moss over the top of the filler and wedge the gold egg on top of that.  Depending on the size of the pot and the egg, you may want to use a little hot glue to keep everything in place, but it wasn't necessary for mine.

This is kind of fun hanging from a knob on our TV cabinet, but I think it would also be super cute hanging off of chair backs or used as a place card at Easter brunch.   You could tie a tag on each "bucket" with a guest's name.  Cute!  Makes me want to plan an Easter brunch now...

What are your plans for Easter?  And have you started decorating yet?  If you need a little inspiration, here are some fabulous projects to check out.

  about Vivienne Wagner