Gerber daisy, peony, and lilac paper flowers

Hyacinths, Gerber daisies, and peonies

I recently saw a post on Aunt Peaches blog on how to make hyacinths from tissue paper and another post where she made dyed coffee filters to make roses. I decided to make some for my daughter's Easter birthday party.

1. I diluted 15-20 drops of food dye McCormick's Neon food color and egg dye in approximately 0.25 - 0.5 cup water in a small bowl. The edges of groups of filters were placed in dye until they were completely wet. I was a little impatient for the filters to dry, so I put them on top of a piece of newspaper on a cookie sheet in the oven at 225 degrees, checking every 20 minutes.

Dying coffee filters-- note that the coffee filters acted like chromatography paper and separated out the pink and the blue of the purple neon dye

Do you see the flowers I saw in these filters?

2. After the filters were dried, fold 3-4 at a time into eighths and cut the tops into a heart shape or smaller petals. Cut a 3" wide (by approximately 18" long) strip of yellow tissue paper, fold it in half and notch the folded side. Cut this strip into 4 pieces (approximately equal in length).

Different flower petal shapes

3. Two techniques for making flower centers:

• Aunt Peaches technique for making hyacinths to make the centers of the flowers:

Flower centers created with hyacinth technique

• Twisted coffee filter: twist yellow filter into a loose ball and stem -- like a large lollipop.

4. Flower assembly: snip off the tip of the folded coffee filters, open them up, and attach them to the flower center with floral tape, floral wire or a pipe cleaner.

5. Fluff out the petals, experiment, and enjoy! I started out to make hyacinths and roses, but ended up with Gerber Daisies and Peonies!

Paper Mache Easter Eggs

I came across an adorable post on the Not Martha blog detailing how to make paper mache eggs using liquid starch, water balloons and tissue paper. I thought this was a wonderful project to make for my daughter's birthday which falls on Easter this year. Since Not Martha did such a wonderful job detailing how to make these eggs in her original post, I will only highlight the variations I tried.

Close up of the bunny punch out eggs that I made on my improvised drying rack (hangers and clothes pins).

1. The dots on the eggs Not Martha's eggs were absolutely adorable. However, since I was making 50+ eggs for Catie's party and class gifts,  I quickly got tired of trying to put little bunny punch outs on the eggs and moved on to stripes.

Eggs decorated with strips of colored tissue paper.

2. I next replaced the tissue paper with streamers in this process. The streamer eggs seemed more flexible than the tissue paper ones, but then again there was also 1 layer instead of 3-4.

Yellow/red egg made from streamers.

3. Since I wanted to stuff the eggs with larger items (toy cars, etc.), I found that cutting a cross in the tops worked better for filling the eggs that cutting in two places only.

Cross shape cut in top of egg.

4. I used gift wrap curling ribbon instead of string as a brighter way to attached the 'pull me' note.

A bowl full of eggs.

5. I filled a few of the eggs with lollipops and left the sticks sticking out to make them look like balloons. I was not completely happy with the result, but have posted a picture here in case it is something someone else might want to try.

Lollipop egg.

6. Finally, I thought the eggs turned out so well that I made some out of normal-sized balloons to use as decorations. The striped eggs were created by wrapping strips of colored tissue paper around the eggs. The polka dot eggs were made by using a tissue paper that already had that design on it.

Large eggs for party decorations.

Good luck and I hope that you have as much fun making these eggs as I did!