Easter Egg Garland Craft

Easter Egg Garland Craft

by | Apr 8, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

It seems we’ve started a little tradition at Sparkles and Sprinkes…holiday garlands to remind us of God’s love.  (Perhaps you made the “Love is” garland or the “Saint Patrick’s Prayer” garland?)  For this Easter season, we made an Easter hymn garland!  Would you like to make one too?

Catholic Easter Garland

This Easter garland has words from the Easter hymn, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today.”  For us, this song brings back sweet memories of meeting with our Making Music Praying Twice group when our oldest children were toddlers.  Making Music Praying Twice has a beautiful version of this song that young children love to sing…and children naturally have so much sweet Easter joy!

Let’s make an Easter egg garland!

These instructions show making a printable version of the garland, available in our Etsy shop.  Our garland is hand-lettered and ready to color!  The garland on Etsy has illustrations to go along with the song verses, plus blank eggs so that you can be creative and add your own drawings.  However, you can make your own in a similar way.  Simply cut egg shapes from cardstock, write verses from the song on some eggs and decorate some eggs with your own drawings.

Print the pdf or draw your own eggs

Print the eggs from our Etsy shop on white cardstock, or pastel cardstock in colors of your choice.  We used white Astrobrights cardtock.

easter garland coloring page

Color the eggs

Color your eggs with colored-pencils, or crayons, or markers.  We think the Botanical Garden colored-pencil set from Prismacolor has a perfect palette for this Easter garland.

Easter egg garland

Cut out the eggs

You can cut slightly outside the black line if you want to have the outline in your garland (our pictures show this option).  If you do not want the egg outline, simply cut slightly inside the egg outline line.

Punch 2 holes at the top of each egg

Punch two holes next to each other at the top of each egg.  We used a standard 1/4″ hole punch.  It is important to punch two holes so that the eggs will face forward when strung on the ribbon or yarn.

String the eggs onto ribbon or yarn

To determine the length of ribbon or yarn, decide on the length you would like the garland to be and add some extra (keep in mind it is easier to cut off extra than to have to restring a garland that is not long enough).   If you are using all the decorated eggs (a total of 18 eggs), the garland nicely spans a fireplace mantel.  If you used a standard ¼” hole punch, we recommend ¼” wide ribbon, or chunky yarn.  This size fits nicely in the holes and allows the eggs to stay in place with the spacing of your choosing along the ribbon or yarn.

Catholic Easter Garland

Decorate your home

Hang the garland in a place in your home to add some extra Easter joy and reminders of God’s love!

HAPPY EASTER!

If you are looking for some Easter basket treat ideas, scroll down for some books we love that might also make nice Easter gifts…

Do you want to do your own hand-lettering?  We love practicing hand-lettering with this beautiful book:  Pretty Simple Lettering by Whitney Farnsworth.  It is such a joy, and brings so much calmness to the day to spend some time with this book.

If you are still looking for Easter basket treats, we wanted to share with you some of our favorite Easter-themed books…

Jan Brett’s The Easter Egg is full of beautiful illustrations, and the story has a sweet message that everyone has unique talents.  Wonderful for your budding artists!

Our children love Rechenka’s Eggs by Patricia Polacco.  Lovely Easter egg art, and a beautiful message of friendship and the importance of caring for others.

Margaret Wise Brown’s The Golden Egg Book is just so fun!  Little children love reading this over and over again.

We love Maite Roche’s books with such sweet illustrations!  The Beautiful Story of the Bible is of course for any time of year, including Easter. 

Note:  Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links.  Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links.  We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

ADORABLE Hatching Chick Easter Card

ADORABLE Hatching Chick Easter Card

by | Apr 4, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Are you looking for a sweet way to say Happy Easter to your friends and relatives?  Come watch our easy-to-follow Youtube tutorial for this adorable card. The front of the card shows an Easter egg, and when the card is opened, there is an adorable hatching chick!

Supplies

 

Click on the video to find out how to make this sweet Easter card for your friends and family. Enjoy!

Do you want to learn to make Youtube videos? Our 12-year-old makes the videos for Sparkles and Sprinkles. She learned how to start a Youtube channel through a great class from Film School 4 Teens. They are a Christian family who offers a number of online film classes.

Note: Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links. Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links. We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

Stations of the Cross blocks

Stations of the Cross blocks

by | Mar 22, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Stations of the Cross for Children

The pandemic has little silver linings sometimes (I hope someday someone will be reading this, and the pandemic will be a distant memory!).   As the church of some dear friends of ours is not having soup suppers this Lent, they decided to invite small groups of friends over on Fridays during Lent to share soup together and to pray the Stations of the Cross at their home.

Our friends had printed out stations of the cross coloring pages for the children to color as the adults took turns saying the prayers for the Stations of the Cross. After the prayer time, we enjoyed soup together, and then the children played while the adults had time to stay around the table and visit.

This beautiful evening made me think that perhaps it might be nice to have some Stations of the Cross that children could place around the house and play and pray with whenever they wanted to.

Stations of the Cross are, of course, not so happy for anyone to look at, and might be especially hard for children to look at.  However, a few years ago, I came across a wonderful little Stations of the Cross coloring booklet at Real Life at Home.  I love this book because the illustrations are as sweet as they can be for such a solemn subject.  We decided to use the images from these booklets for our Stations of the Cross blocks.  However, you could use any images of your choice.  You could find images online, draw your own images, or even take photos of the Stations of the Cross at your church and print them out for these blocks.
Stations of the Cross toddler blocks

Make your own Stations of the Cross for children

Please note that the coloring images we used for these blocks are not our own.  You can find them at Real Life at Home (where there is even a prayer reflection booklet to go along with them).  You could also get images from another source or draw your own, if you are feeling especially creative!

coloring stations of the cross

Step 1: Print and color your images

We used colored pencils to color our images. 

stations of the cross for kids

Step 2: Cut out your images

Stations of the Cross blocks

Step 3: Cut your blocks

We cut a long 2×4 board into 14 square blocks.  However, if you don’t have time for woodworking, there are many Etsy sellers who have blocks of various sizes that are sanded and ready to use for crafts.  If you wanted to make the blocks smaller or bigger, you could print out the page with a “custom scale,” or use different images of your choice.  The Real Life at Home mini booklet images work perfectly with our squares cut from 2x4s (the wooden squares end up being 3.5″x3.5″).

stations of the cross blocks

Step 4: Sand your blocks

We sanded the cut edges, plus sanded at an angle at the corners to make the blocks easier to handle for little hands.  Though cutting the blocks is probably a task for an adult (here at Sparkles and Sprinkles, we say, “Thank you Super-Dad!”), sanding can be a fun activity for children.

Stations of the Cross for kids

Step 5: Use Mod Podge to attach and coat images

Use a foam brush to spread a layer of Mod Podge on one face of the block, then lay the image on this face.  Brush Mod Podge over the image to seal the image, so that the blocks and images will hold up to children handling them.  Be sure to follow the package instructions for drying times.  You may want to use 2 coats.

Stations of the Cross toddler blocks

Ready to Play and Pray

We hope you and your little ones enjoy making and playing and praying with Stations of the Cross blocks too!

Are you looking for a soup recipe for your next soup supper, whether at home or at church?  You might enjoy trying our recipe for French Vegetable Soup.  

Note:  Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links.  Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links.  We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

Saint Patrick’s Day Holy Trinity Craft

Saint Patrick’s Day Holy Trinity Craft

by | Mar 9, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Children of all ages can enjoy making this shamrock Holy Trinity craft, reminding us of how Saint Patrick explained the Holy Trinity to the Irish people.

1.  Gather your supplies:  free printable Holy Trinity pages, white cardstock or printer paper (3 sheets:  2 for printing, and 1 as a background), markers or colored pencils, scissors, glue

2.  Color the printable pages.  (There is an option for printing the shamrock hearts and stem in green, but we found our children enjoyed coloring the hearts and stem too.)

3.  Cut out the heart leaves, stem, images of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and titles.

4.  Glue the shamrock heart leaves and stem onto your paper (or cardstock), then glue on the Holy Trinity images and titles.

Are you looking for more Saint Patrick’s Day ideas? 

Check out our Saint Patrick’s Prayer garland by clicking here.

Click on the image below to get our free shamrock Holy Trinity printable:

Holy Trinity Shamrock craft

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Growing in Lent

Growing in Lent

by | Mar 8, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

We are starting a new Lenten tradition this year… growing our own Easter grass! 

“Behold, I make all things new.”

I had the chance to talk with some dear friends the other day about Lenten traditions.  I shared that one of our favorite things to do is the Lenten Path from Catholic Icing.  It is a beautiful way to visualize the days of Lent and also to think of special sacrifices and prayers for each day.

We are planning to do the Lenten Path this year again, but we are also excited to add a new tradition… growing our own Easter grass in an Easter basket.  My friend who shared this fun idea said that she and her family plant the seeds on Ash Wednesday, and by Easter time the grass should be nicely growing.  I’m not a very prompt person, so luckily, from what I have read, even if you start the seeds at least a couple weeks before Easter, you should still have some beautiful Easter grass by Easter.

Easter grass

Not only is planting grass seeds in an Easter basket a super fun activity, it can also be a beautiful symbol of how the purpose of Lent is really to help us to grow in God’s love.  

I make all things new
Easter basket scripture tag
faith the size of a mustard seed quote

We created this free printable for you with tags you can attatch to your grass growing baskets.  Each tag has a beautiful scripture passage about growing and seeds.  There is also a blank tag if you want to add your own phrase (like “Grow in God’s love!”) or perhaps the name of your child.

scripture basket tags

We took advantage of some unseasonably warm weather over the weekend and planted our seeds in Easter baskets outside.

We lined our baskets with waxed paper* (as suggested on a blog we read, but you can also use a plant saucer that fits your basket).  Then we filled the baskets with about an inch of soil, sprinkled the seeds, covered the seeds with a bit more soil, and watered the seeds.

*Update:  We wondered if waxed paper would really hold up.  For us, it held up for about 2 weeks, then it started to leak when we watered the grass.  We would not recommend using waxed paper, unless you are going to have the grass in the basket for fewer than 2 weeks.  When we noticed the leaking, we ended up transferring the grass and soil to plastic take-out containers that happened to fit nicely into our baskets (we painted the containers with acrylic paint, so they would match the baskets).

easter basket grass
grass seeds in basket
easter basket grass
seeds covered with soil
watering seeds

Watering the seeds can be a great opportunity to talk about how God showers us with His graces to help us to grow in His love.

Growing Easter grass in a basket

After only a week of growing the grass inside a sunny room in our home, our grass is about 5 inches high. (It can be trimmed if it gets too long before Easter.)

easter basket with natural grass

Update: The waxed paper liner only held up for about 2 weeks. We transferred our grass and soil to a plastic take-out container (painted with acrylic paint to match) to avoid leaking.

We are not experts on the details of how to plant and care for this Easter grass, so we followed the suggestions from these two blogs:

Do you want to explore more about seeds and growing?  We’ve enjoyed these two books…

We are currently studying the early AD times, and enjoying this book:  Who is Jesus?  His Life, His Land, His Time.  We recently read a passage about the mustard seed… and that the mustard plant can grow to about 10 feet tall!  We are thinking we might plant a mustard seed this summer… what a great way to bring Scripture to life!

If you are looking for a simple book about seeds, we love this beautifully illustrated book about seeds:  Plant Secrets by Emily Goodman.

Have you grown Easter grass before?  Or are you going to give it try this year?  We would love it if you want to share your ideas!  Please submit a comment in the form below.

May God bless you and your family on your Lenten journey!

Note:  Some links on this page are Amazon Affiliate links.  Sparkles and Sprinkles is a participant in the Amazon Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

Other links may or may not be affiliate links.  We provide links because we have found these products or services beneficial, and we think you might too.

DIY Stickers (plus Youtube tutorial)

DIY Stickers (plus Youtube tutorial)

by | Mar 8, 2022 | Craft Tutorials

Want to make your own stickers? Come watch our latest Youtube tutorial on how to make these fun and super easy DIY stickers! You can draw your own designs, or download our free pdf printable to get started.

(Please scroll down to get your free printable.)

Supplies: clear packing tape, scissors, paper (or our printable), non-stick parchment paper (the baking type), pen or pencil, and markers or colored pencils.
diy sticker supplies
Watch our quick Youtube tutorial and have fun making your very own stickers!
Click on the image below to get your free pdf sticker printable.
diy sticker page