Jo Cotterill

I haven’t posted anything crafty for ages, even though I do make things on an almost weekly basis. Today my daughter and I made an Easter tree. This came about because I was trawling Pinterest (one of my favourite pastimes) and came across Easter eggs made from Hama beads. We made some, and I wondered what on earth to do with them. I thought about getting some sticks from the garden but it was chilly out there! Besides, we have a huge stash of junk modelling stuff, so I thought RIGHT! Time to get out my BRAND NEW HOT GLUE GUN 🙂

First of all, I jammed two kitchen roll tubes together to make a longer one, and cut slits in the bottom one so that I could sellotape it to something sturdy – the lid of a jolly good box:
You’ll see that I was quite generous with the sellotape! You’ll also see that I’ve started gluing some tissue paper flowers to the bottom, to hide the ugliness. These are made from two circles of tissue paper (which, as an example of my laziness, I admit I bought pre-cut. I think they were on cheap at Hobbycraft one day and I just thought oh, they look useful for something) pinched together in the middle and glued with Pritt Stick.
Then I cut lots and lots of ‘branches’ out of white cardboard and stuck them to the top of the cardboard tube with the GLUE GUN! (seriously, if you haven’t got one of these, get one, they’re only £5 for the mini gun in Hobbycraft and they will make your crafting life SO MUCH EASIER. Trust me, this could not be done with Pritt Stick or PVA. And sellotape would just look awful.) You do have to wait for it to heat up, and golly it gets through a stick of glue quite quickly, and be careful not to burn your fingers on the hot glue (do not let your child use it).

I stuck four branches inside the top of the tube first and then worked my way down the sides until I’d run out of branches.

Then my daughter cut some leaves out of silver paper while I finished covering the base in tissue paper flowers (don’t use hot glue on tissue paper; the glue is too heavy). I stuck the leaves to the branches using Pritt Stick, and then we added the Hama bead eggs, strung up with thin gold wire (leftover from my jewellery making kit – but you could use thread. The holes in the Hama beads are small though, so you won’t be able to use ribbon without a lot of effort). Oh, and my daughter insisted on colouring in the trunk, which I totally agreed needed doing.

And voila! Not bad for a last-minute idea. It could do with some more eggs on the branches, but Easter’s still a few weeks away! Maybe we’ll stick some chicks to the branches too…