Easter Fun

I participated in a blog hop with a group of friends on a secret sister swap where each of the blogs would have a post on either Easter or Spring time.  One of the awesome crafters posted a neat technique on how to dye Easter Eggs without using dye. Thank you to Cindy for her blog at My Lazy Crafternoon.  It was the neatest thing and I thought I have GOT to try this!!  Brandon and I went to visit my mother in Little Rock, Arkansas.  After we got there, I mentioned that I wanted to go a second hand store to see if we could find ties and try this technique.

Cindy had great directions but we were curious about things along the way so here are our successes and failures.  So you need 100% silk ties, some way to tie cut up sections of the tie (string, ties that come with garbage bags or strong rubber bands), some light colored cotton, a pot of water and about a 1/4 cup of vinegar.... oh yes, don't forget the eggs. 
When you get the ties cut the seam out and remove the facing pieces stitched inside the ties that helps it keep it's shape so you are left with just the silk material.  The more ties you get the more designs you get but the more cutting you may need to do.  I love how Cindy said if 10 was good then 30 must be better!  We stopped at 8 because I was a little nervous about it.

Last night we did a dozen eggs, covered them in cold water added the 1/4 cup of vinegar.  We followed directions we have for boiled eggs which is to put the eggs in the cold water, bring it to a boil, then turn off, cover and wait 15 minutes.

Here are the ties we bought

And here is my mother helping me to cut out the facing and remove the seams

I guess I didn't take a picture of the pot full of eggs but essentially you will have a pot full of eggs wrapped in the different ties.  You wrap the eggs where the "right" side of the fabric is closest to the egg.  Where it touches the egg is where the design will transfer.  Some designs are really neat looking where the material is wrapped and tied and looks like a neat star print.  Cindy's direction said to then take a light colored cotton and wrap the eggs after wrapping them with the tie pieces.  We were talking and I wondered what the cotton would do.  We weren't sure but decided to leave one egg with out the cotton to see if it was different.  This egg didn't look any different than the others wrapped in the cotton material.

When you look at Cindy's blog where I got this idea you can also see the weave of the actual material on top of the print.  It is really neat to see the surprise when you unwrap your eggs -- just like opening presents because you are not sure of what may be end up behind that wrap.

So here is a picture off all our eggs together.

And now here are pictures of each of the eggs with each tie behind it

American Flag

2nd Flag egg

this tie looked like it had a dartboard on it

This tie was a Tabsco tie and had some neat things like this ship

here is a better picture of the tie with the ship

Same material different position on the tie, you can see the writing pretty well... oh yeah, and the writing was reverse -  of course..

A tie with sports equipment on it

This paisley turned out real neat

and the last couple other designs

On this egg, we had one tie that did not work- came out white.  We wrapped it with one of the pieces that just came out and reboiled it for about 3 minutes and this is what came out.

and the basket full of eggs

Today we were really kind of bummed of having to destroy our fun pretty work.  For breakfast we were having omelets so we decided to blow out the eggs and to dye these eggs.  Last night we had dried the pieces of wet material and thought we would try wrapping the blown eggs with this material. 

That didn't work so good... most didn't pick up any of the color... so we have decided that re-using the material after it dried does not work.  My mom's friend was over for dinner and she took pictures of those.  I am anxious to post my first real post so I am going to just post and any updatese about the blown eggs will be posted later.

Thank you for looking.

Kimmo's Korner - Scrafting

Years ago I had a friend start a blog and I thought maybe some day.  I was kind of busy and not sure what all I would put on it.  I did consider doing something related to recipes and my Pampered Chef business but it didn't happen.

Another thing over the years that I have wanted to do was to get all my scrapbooking items out and actually use them more often than once a year.  I received (purchased) a Cricut Expression for Christmas a year and a half ago and I thought I got this thing I need to use it.  My friend, Anne, got me hooked into the Cricut Message Board website and well my addiction has happened.  I did have some punches, stamps, some papers and other embellishments... just not as cool as what we use today.

Did you know if you don't do much for a while - so many new items come out and it seems I had missed out on learning some awesome techniques over the years.  Coloring stamps - not the way I used to do it where we colored the stamp quickly and then stamped it but stamping and coloring what is on the paper while blending the colors.  How about Tim?  I mean WOW what talent and creativeness!!  The vintage look is something I want to get better at doing along so many other things that have come out since I wasn't paying attention.  I am having so much fun crafting and learning scrapbooking techniques and so now comes along a blog where I can post what I make for family and friends, send and receive.

I have come to find that lately I am doing a mix of scrap booking and crafting and saw that someone else called it scrafting... that is what I am enjoying doing these days... so scrafting it is.

I will do my best to keep it up but for now... here we go!