I ordered some of the bits and bobs needed to make this Easter wreath, months ago and they have been sat on my desk, waiting for Bear and I to have the time to do it. We tried 3 different ways to make the individual eggs and have 3 different ideas for you display them. Yes, this is a very sticky craft but it is fun and the outcome is worth it. 

My biggest tip would be to make them in the kitchen if you have somewhere to sit as you will want to wash yours and your children’s hands quite often.

What you need for your Easter Wreath:

• Water balloons – you can buy these easily on ebay with free postage,
• Embroidery thread – again, I bought on ebay and got 3 of each colour for £1.49 with free postage and used 1 per egg.
• Bostik White Glu,
• A bowl,
• Water,
• Little chicks or eggs if you’d like to put them inside the eggs.
• Easter nest paper – available online or I did see lots at The Works. I’m sure other craft shops or even supermarkets may have some.

 

 

You will also need……

Well, originally, I thought that I could just string the eggs together into a wreath shape but that didn’t work, so you will also need either some wire, or a ring made of anything – thick cardboard would work well. 

I used a pipe insulator. I bought them from a home improvements shop a while a go and they are pretty cheap. I also used masking tape.

 

 

Don’t worry if you don’t have anything to make a ring with – scroll down for two other ideas of how to display your colourful string eggs.

 

So how do you make the eggs?

If you are happy to just make the eggs as they are, without putting something inside, simply blow up your water balloons to the size you would like and tie. We made 14 and had 2 spare that I didn’t include in the wreath. 

If you would like to put something inside the eggs such as a mini sparkle egg or even a little chick, as we did….

 

 

…the first thing that I would suggest, is, cut your nails! You need to slightly stretch the water balloons and they are not as strong as regular balloons. I kept on ripping balloon after balloon but as soon as I cut nails, I was able to stretch them and pop something inside, relatively easily. Bear and Nanna were pretty good at this too. First of all, stretch the opening of the balloon gently and pop your surprise inside. Work it into the balloon as much as you can and then blow. Once you have the technique, its easy but don’t be disheartened if your first 5 or 6 attempts don’t work. If you’re really clever, you could put some mini foil wrapped chocolate eggs inside.

 

 

When you have all your balloons blown and tied, it’s time to start getting sticky. You need to prepare your glue first, then your embroidery thread and you’ll need to wash your hands in between each balloon / egg. We tried 3 different ways of making the eggs. First we simply dipped the thread into the thick glue. This worked quite well but you need to be really careful as to how you put the thread into the glue as it can knot so very easily. 

 

 

The second way was to cover the balloon with glue and the wrap dry thread around the egg. This was quite easy but it meant that when the egg dried, you had a layer of glue in between the string when you popped the balloon and it took me ages to cut it all off. If you want the eggs to look like the ones I made, DO NOT USE THIS METHOD.

 

 

Finally, and I think the best method we tried, was to add a little bit of water to the glue, a tablespoon at a time, until the glue was thinner, and then dip the thread in gently. You don’t want to make it too thin though as you need the glue to give the egg its strength. The thread will knot easily so you could try unravelling the thread outside of the bowl and drag it through the thinner glue as you need it.

 

 

No matter what method you choose to try, the next bit is the same – wrap the thread around the balloons, criss crossing round and round, up and down, making sure that you don’t have any big holes or gaps between the threads – especially if you have a little surprise inside the balloons.

 

 

To dry the eggs, we lay each one on top of a mug, cup little pot, anything that could stand on top of our log burner without melting. You could put the cups on top of a radiator or simply wait for them to air dry but this will take a good 24hrs to be sure that the string is hard. Ours took about 2 hours on the log burner.

 

 

Display Idea #1

Simply pile them in a big bowl. They are so eye catching and look stunning.

 

 

Display Idea #2

Hang the eggs on a piece of string for a beautiful garland.

 

 

Display Idea #3

If you’d like to go on to make the wreath, first you need to find or make a ring of your chosen size. 

As I used the pipe insulation, covered with masking tape to make it a lighter colour, I stuck each egg onto the wreath by threading a short piece of thread through one or two strings and stuck each end down, tightly with masking tape which then blended in.

 

 

As this part of the craft was quite organic (I was making it up as I went along), I then decided to cover the parts of the pipe insulation that you could see, with bright Easter nest paper curls that we had.

I spread Bostik White Glu all over the outside edge and inside edge of the wreath and Bear stuck the nest paper curls that we had chopped up, all over. I know it looks bright and garish but I think it compliments the eggs.

 

 

The finished Easter wreath

 

 

What do you think?

I hope you like this craft and give it a go. Let me know if you do as I’d love to see. 

Thanks for reading, until next time,

Love

 

Disclosure: I was sent the Bostik Glu and some crafty bits to come up with my own tutorial.