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Sunday, April 6, 2014

DIY Littlest Pet Shop Easter Egg Decorations

I'm bursting with excitement as I think these are just 'tweet'!
The inspiration for them came from HERE but I must say the added pet shop touch is what I think makes ours so cute! I just LoVe everything about these and I will be packing these away ever so carefully in hopes they will last for many years to come.

To make these your younger children will have to have an understanding of force because if they put too much pressure on these hollow eggs while making them they are sure to break. It's delicate, fragile work but oh so worth the time.

First gather your supplies:

You will need:
-Raw eggs, bowl, butter knife
-Acrylic paint, brush, water dish and paint tray
-Tacky glue
-Glitter
-Felting wool (cotton stuffing if you don't have any, your nests will just be white)
-Littlest Pet Shop or other small toy (if they have magnets on bottom you may also want a magnet to glue in your egg)

You will also need ribbon, scissors and a glue gun which I forgot in the picture

This project will take a bit of time and there is waiting between stages so be prepared to not finish it all in one sitting.

1) Hollow out your eggs as shown below. To do this you want to tap the side of the egg very gently with something you have on hand like the end of a butter knife as I did below.

After you have poked in a rough oval shape you need to pick out the broken bits carefully. You may need to carefully chip away the edges until the hole is the size you want.

Wash your egg and gently rub the inside of the egg. The inner membrane will rub loose so you can peel it off.

The last step is to carefully trim around the oval to smooth out the edges. You must be extremely careful doing this and  cutting with the tip of your scissors works the best. Don't try to make it perfect. It's imperfections will not hinder the beauty of your final project. Set aside to dry.
2) When you egg is dry it's time to paint it. You want to choose two different colours. I chose pink for the inside of mine and turquoise for the outer shell.

FYI Cut off the base of a 2 litre pop bottle and it makes the perfect paint tray for five colours or less.

At first my girls didn't feel like making these but as soon as I started painting, they jumped right in. Sierra and Aayla both wanted turquoise and yellow but they reversed where they put their colours.

3) When you have painted your egg shell inside and out you need to let it dry completely.

4) Once your egg is dry, make a trail of tacky glue around the edge of the opening. It must be a tacky glue. Regular glue is too runny and won't hold it's shape (by the way...my egg broke it'self into a heart shape. I probably couldn't have done that if I had tried).

5) Next sprinkle on some glitter in what ever colour choice you want. If you sprinkle over a plate or a piece of paper it is easier to put the extra glitter back into the bottle so as to not waste it.
Want a neat clean up tip for the glitter that escapes the plate and hits the table? I do not remember where I first saw this...somewhere on facebook I think...but it's brilliant (and I can't claim ownership of the idea). Use play dough! Dab up the glitter (which is notorious for getting every where) with the play dough and you now have a clean table and cool glitter play dough to play with!

6) This time while your glue and glitter is set aside to dry you can at least have fun with your new glittery play dough.

7)  When the glue and glitter is dry take a small chunk of your felting wool or cotton stuffing and roll it into a small flat circle shape. If you have felting needles you can shape it to be more nest like. If not it will be just fine.

I originally planned to glue the pet shops into the egg (my girls didn't like that idea). Luckily all the duck/chick pet shops we had to use, had magnets on their feet. Instead we hot glued a magnet to the base of the egg so the pets could be removed and played with still.

Add in your felted nest, add your pet and turn the egg upside down to make sure the toy is either securely glued or magnetized in place. We had to dig out a little centre in our nest as the magnets were not strong enough to hold the pet shop in place when the wool was too thick.
8) Hot glue a ribbon loop to the top of the egg to be the hanger and glue on a bow. They are now ready to hang. We used a glittery ribbon because I happened to have some in my stash of supplies and you can never have too much glitter!
All our Littlest Pet Shop Eggs hanging on our Egg Tree

So what do you think? 'Tweet' right?

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