easter origami baskets

Our first Easter post was bunny origami, from the book Windy. Here is another Easter origami craft. This one is origami easter baskets — adapted from this pattern for a newspaper bin from origami club (I found following the animation easier than following the diagram, by the way) which I found via pinterest on my paper board.

I don't like buying a lot of plastic Easter materials which only live in the house a few days. Here is an upcycled basket which is fun to make. Oh, I did break down and buy some commercial stickers ^_^

I tried these out with some friends and neighbours. This basket is by our neighbour W., aged 4.

origami easter baskets

M A T E R I A L S

—sheet of newspaper (or very large sheet of rectangular paper)
—glue
— 1 or 2 strips of paper about 1/2 -inch by 11 inches (you can cut a strip lengthwise from a standard) letter-size sheet of paper or use lucky star strips, which we did)
— decorations such as feathers, stickers, rhinestones, washi tape
— extra newspaper or coloured paper cut into strips to be filling for the basket (optional)

I N S T R U C T I O N S

— fold newspaper according to the instructions from origami club. You might need to do a couple before you get it right, that's ok.

— put a little glue at the bottom, between the bottom flap and the bottom of the basket — this will give it extra support for holding eggs. Give it time to dry. You can decorate the eggs and basket while it dries.

— attach the handles using a stapler. I used a mini-stapler. If you use a standard stapler, staple sideways to be sure the handle is punched through and won't slip out.

— decorate your basket. We did letters for each child's name on the side of the basket with washi tape.

E G G S


For the eggs we used some kool-aid dye:

1 packet of kool-aid + 2/3 cup tap water. The koolaid is nice because it smells good and costs about 30¢ a packet. It does a great job.

We also made some food colouring dye:

5-10 drop food colouring + 1/2 cup tap water + 1 tablespoon vinegar.

— put stuffing & eggs in basket and you're done. Good job!

Happy Easter

We had an impromptu drawing, painting, egg dying session before dinner with plain store-bought dye, nothing fancy. It was so fun, although, inspired by egg-and-spoon races, very few eggs survived us. Only these brave three.

Easter pins

These are some of my favourite Easter activities, all via pinterest.

Embroidery, pinterest via flossbox

Traditional pysanka, pinterest via presentandcorrect

Bunny buns, pinterest via usagi

Paper cutting: rooster wycinanki, pinterest via that artist woman

Knitting pattern (free), pinterest via slip slip knit

Natural dyes, pinterest via two men and a little farm

Neon, pinterest via oh joy

Happy Easter

We're too young for Easter Egg dying this year, so we're just decorating construction paper eggs. If we were going to dye eggs, maybe we'd do these cool stripey ones. Or make eggshell planters.

If you're looking for another Easter activity, our bunny origami from last year is fun.

Happy Easter!

Sunday honey

After the Easter eggs have all been dyed and hunted, you might be looking for something to do? If you have any food colouring left, you might make "Colored Honey" from the Pooh Cook Book, a very old, loved and used (as you can see) book from our shelf.

Ingredients: honey and vegetable food colouring.

Only use a tiny bit, especially if you are using red dye, which can add a little bit of flavour if you add too much.You might use a dipped toothpick to transfer the colouring to the honey.

This would be nice on leftover hot cross buns tomorrow morning, don't you think?

Easter Bunny origami

Do you remember the meadow bunnies in Windy? Here they are flying their kites.

You can make your own bunny with origami. You just need a square piece of paper, a pair of scissors and a pencil or crayon. You can check that your paper is perfectly square by folding it in half, the same as the first steps in our directions below (1 and 2) below. If there is no overlap, then your paper is square. Here are directions for folding up your bunny:


So it will look like this as you fold:


You can use some scraps of coloured paper to make the insides of the ears pink (or you might colour it in).


If you like, your bunny can have a kite, too (tutorial here). We used small sticks, glue and paper to make our bunny kites, but you could simply use plain folded paper. We used florist wire for the string, which is cloth-covered wire (so it holds the kite in the air). It is tricky for bunnies to hold their kites. Usually they use their mouths, front feet or tails. Use your imagination to make the perfect kite for an Easter bunny. We would love to see pictures of your bunnies. Mail your pictures to windyandfriends{at}gmail {dot}com.