Easter in Black and White

Hi folks, hallo zusammen,

On Sunday I spent the most lovely Easter Sunday with my family in St. Pölten. Luckily the weather was fine enough, so that I could finally parade my new dress and shoes. ;) When the sun came out in the afternoon, my sister and I took the chance to steal away from the family table after our family brunch (wow, I really ate tons and tons of delicious food :D ) and snapped a few pictures for the blog in front of my mum's gorgeous forsythia.

am Sonntag hatte ich den wunderbarsten Ostersonntag mit meiner Familie in St. Pölten - inklusive Brunch mit Tonnen an großartigem Essen. Glücklicherweise war das Wetter gut genug, dass ich endlich mal mein neues Kleid und meine neuen Schuhe ausführen konnte. ;) Am Nachmittag hat sich dann sogar auch noch die Sonne hinter ihrer Wolkendecke hervorgekämpft und meine Schwester und ich haben die Zeit genutzt uns kurz vom Familientisch davonzustehlen, um ein paar Fotos für den Blog zu machen. Das im Hintergrund ist übrigens der Hammer-Forsythienstrauch im Garten meiner Mutter... 

Last Minute DIY Easter Gift Boxes Upcycled from Old Juice Boxes

Hey folks, hallo zusammen,

in case you still need to wrap your eggs and candies for tomorrow's egg hunt I have a great last-minute DIY idea for you.
In Austria it's tradition to hide Easter baskets for the kids (hopefully outside, if the weather is good enough). Those are usually single-use baskets made from cardboard. As I don't want to buy new baskets every year, that are highly probable thrown away directly after Easter, I last year decided to go a bit unconventional and to make my own Easter baskets from things I already have at home. Last year I folded origami Easter baskets using colourful magazine paper and this year I decided to turn some old juice cartons into Easter boxes. Those are no Easter baskets in the strict sense of the word but turned out really cute nevertheless, in my opinion. :)

falls ihr auch noch die Süßigkeiten und Eier für die morgige Eiersuche verpacken müsst, habe ich eine lustige Last-Minute DIY Idee für euch.
Gemäß der Tradition werden bei uns in der Familie zu Ostern für die Kinder Osterkörbchen versteckt (hoffentlich im Garten, wenn das Wetter mitspielt). Diese Körbchen sind normalerweise aus Karton und für den Einmalgebrauch bestimmt. Da ich aber keine besonders große Lust darauf habe, jedes Jahr neue Körbchen zu kaufen, die dann höchstwahrscheinlich direkt nach Ostern in der Mülltonne landen, habe ich letztes Jahr entschieden ein bisschen unkonventionell vorzugehen und meine eigenen Körbchen zu basteln und zwar aus Dingen, die ich bereits zu Hause habe. Letztes Jahr gabs daher selbstgefaltete Origami-Osterkörbchen aus buntem Magazinpapier und heuer habe ich mich dazu entschieden ein paar alte Saftkartons aufzupeppen. Die Osterboxen die so entstanden sind, sind zwar keine Körbchen im eigentlichen Sinn, sie sind aber meiner Meinung nach trotzdem ziemlich süß geworden. :)

Origami Easter Bunnies

 
Hey folks, hallo zusammen,

can you believe that Easter is already in two weeks? This year's first months passed extremely fast in my opinion!
As always there will be a big Easter lunch at my mum's house on Easter Sunday and as always I'll be responsible for the table decoration. Last year I made origami chickens, this year I decided to go for Easter bunnies. As you already know, I really like to work with old newspapers (proof here and here), so this is what I did here as well.

könnt ihr glauben, dass in zwei Wochen schon wieder Ostern ist? Ich finde, die ersten paar Monate diesen Jahres sind extrem schnell vergangen!
Wie jedes Jahr findet auch heuer wieder ein großes Osteressen bei meiner Mama zu Hause statt und wie immer bin ich auch diesmal für die Tischdekoration zuständig. Letztes Jahr habe ich Origami-Hühner gebastelt, diesmal habe ich mich für Osterhasen entschieden. Und weil ich so gern mit altem Zeitungspapier arbeite (Beweise hier und hier), habe ich auch diesmal darauf zurückgegriffen.

Colourful Easter Eggs

Hello everybody,

it's still Easter week and therefore I'll bring you another little Easter DIY project: colourful Easter eggs.
To be completely honest with you, this project didn't turn out as originally planned... When I started with the eggs I realised that I hadn't bought self-adhesive crepe tape but only crepe tape and about five minutes later I found out that the colour I had bought didn't cover as well as I had hoped... Damn! But then I decided to simply improvise and I think the result is quite respectable, therefore I chose to share the Easter eggs anyways. I hope you like them as well! :)

What you'll need

• blown-out eggs
• acrylic paint in pastel shades
• paintbrush
• gift ribbon (ca. 20 cm/egg)
• self-adhesive crepe tape
• matches

How it works

The basic idea behind this Easter eggs is to colour just parts of the so that you can still see the natural colour of the eggs. For my first Easter egg I decided to colour half of the egg, therefore I fixed the crepe tape in the middle of the egg.

Then I painted the egg.

As already mentioned I found out really soon that the paint didn't really cover the egg as I wanted. Therefore I decided to give the colour a little structure by making very short strokes with my paintbrush in a regular pattern.

After the colour had dried I fixed the ribbon to the egg. To do so I attached the ribbon to a match by making a knot. Then I inserted the match into the egg.
When you pull the ribbon a little bit the match turns around and with that fix the ribbon. 

As you can see above, for my second egg I chose to colour only the lower part it and for my third egg I decided to leave a stripe in the middle.

Done! :)

All images by Stefanie Reichl

Origami Hen-Box as Easter Place Card Holder

Hello everybody,

Easter is approaching! In my family it's tradition to get together on Easter Sunday for a huge lunch at my mum's and usually it's my job to set the table and decorate a little bit. This year I decided to make table cards and a fitting table card holder and as it's Easter I thought that hens may be fitting. Furthermore I wanted to do something with origami so I browsed the internet for ideas and found these great origami hens by Origami Spirit. They are actually boxes which means that you can either put some sweets into them or as in our case a red egg which is an absolute necessity for playing "egg tapping" at the Easter lunch table... ;)

What you'll need

• origami paper (20 x 20cm)
• drawing paper
• contour scissors
• pencil 
• triangle ruler
• a nice pen

How it works

Fold your origami hens following the instructions of this very good instruction video:

 

At first the folding took me quite long but once I knew how to fold these little babies properly I needed about 8 minutes for one of them.   

For the place cards I used simple drawing paper. I simply drew them on the paper (63,5 x 4 cm) and cut them out with contour scissors to give them a nice frame. 

For the names I used a golden gel pen. Done! :)

 

All images by Stefanie Reichl