Hatched!

An update on the Robin Nest situation...

Robin's Nest from Kyla Sweet on Vimeo.

Pay attention to the new life, not the seriously overgrown backyard.

Eggs!

Despite it being absolute crunch time at school, I managed to squeeze in a few Easter crafts this year, under the guise of "Simone and I will do a craft together". What really happens is that I try to do said craft while she whirls and dervishes around my feet and together we create a sort of chaos. Sadly - or maybe not so sadly - I don't have a picture of the result of our egg dying session. First of all, we do not go the hardboiled route in my family. We are hardcore and blow out the egg. Which involves poking a tiny hole in each end with a stitch ripper and literally blowing into said tiny hole until all the contents come out the other end, leaving you passed out and red-faced on the floor. I managed two of these before deciding, "Hey, two is enough!" I decided to dye them using "natural dyes", in this case a mess of red onion skins I had been saving and boiled up. But blown eggs do not sink - they float. Thus the faintly magenta dye mottled all over unevenly and all in all - it was rather unimpressive. But natural! Still, those ubiquitous PAAS tablets are looking more attractive..(PAAS seems to be a one holiday company doesn't it? Writing out their name made me curious about whence it all came and lo - here is the history of PAAS!)

A slightly - and only slightly - more successful craft was the egg mosaic card. I've been saving the shells of all the beautiful eggs I get from the farmers market because who can bear to just throw away a perfect pale blue eggshell? If you can, then you really, really don't want to see my art supply room. But what to do with these shells? I finally settled on crushing a few and making a mosaic with the shells and acrylic medium as the mosaic goop. See - not all that impressive. But once I mounted these on nice heavy paper and stamped Happy Easter in pale green - it looked a little bit better. I still have about a dozen eggshells left and I guess I better find another way to use 'em.




It is disappointing to have sucked at Easter this year. I love the colors, the eggs, the pale pastels, the chocolate, the blossoms in the world right now, daffodils, tulips , fuzzy bunnies, chicks- everything that ties into Easter with blooming and rebirth of the natural world. But Simone isn't quite old enough to appreciate it all so for her, I just settled on an old school pastel wicker basket from the thift store (50 cents!) and some Eric Carle number flashcards to tuck into it. Anyway, how can I compete with the real deal - found in our backyard on the fence gate:


Real Easter Eggs from Kyla Sweet on Vimeo.