Easter crafts
An Easter bonnet with a twist
Guest blog by Jacqueline Lewis
We’ve been having fun this holiday thinking about Spring and what we can make to celebrate Easter.
I really want to start some family traditions with the boys and one of my fondest childhood memories was the Easter bonnet competition at school. So when I asked the boys if they wanted to make one they jumped at the chance. BUT it had to include dinosaurs…. that was their terms! So…. a bit of online research to help with some ideas and they decided a big top hat should be our main shape.
Images credit: Jacqui Lewis 
Images credit: Jacqui Lewis
A trustworthy Babipur box and brown packing paper gave us our sturdy hat structure! I drew a large oval and cut out the middle for their head. This was a bit of trial and error to get the right size I’m sure there must be a better way to do it! I then cut a strip of cardboard and wrapped it around in a loop to fit the inner oval shape. Then I managed to tear off the Babipur parcel tape from our box and used it to tape the cardboard together. I turned the hat upside down and drew around the oval shape to get the hat’s lid. Again, I used the parcel tape to secure it together.
The boys had great fun mixing PVA glue with water to make paper mache ‘gloop’. We tore up the brown parcel paper our delivery came in and covered over all of the hat, especially hiding areas of any tape showing through. It took about 24 hours to be properly dry, I loved it natural but the boys wanted to paint it.
We used Okonorm paint mixed with poster paint to get a nice thick paint perfect for one coat coverage! Harry wanted blue for the sky to make a dinosaur landscape. We then used the Erzi eggs and Grapat purple mandala pieces for dinosaur eggs and attached them using blu-tac. I wrapped around real leaves and flowers and used a Holztiger dinosaur on top to finish it off! The Grapat mandala pieces stayed on the hat much better, I think the Erzi eggs would need to be glued on which I couldn’t bring myself to do!
A new family tradition
It was really nice to start a new family tradition and this is something I hope we continue to do every year. I love traditional bonnets but I also love how the boys had their own idea of what they wanted to make. We talked so much about dinosaurs, eggs, and different animals. It was lovely to see the boys working together making something three dimensional for a change too! Our next project they’ve requested is a space hat… any ideas how to make that gratefully received!
