I Love to Create: Easter Project Gone Bad

First off, since this was intended to be a holiday project I feel that I should apologize to Jesus, Goddess Ostara, the Easter Bunny and anyone else associated with the season.   My Peeps Tree wasn’t intended to mock you, I promise.  It’s just ugly.  It can’t help it.  Let me explain.

It started off as a nice bit of crafting time with my son, Tanner.  We’re talking; we’re bonding; we’re painting.  See?  Look at the joy in his eyes.

We’re big on decorative holiday trees in our house: Party Trees for birthdays, Spooky Trees for Halloween, Shamrock Trees for St. Patty’s Day, etc.    I had a couple of undecorated, paper trees left-over from Christmas–they looked all sad and abandoned sitting there on the shelf– so, there seemed like no time like the present to turn them into Easter Trees!  

Poor little guys, didn’t know that my crafty plans would be the beginning of their demise.

It started off fine.  These cute cones are the right shape and size for a modern take on a traditional holiday.  We busted into our Little Chica Paint Pack, grabbed a sponge brush and covered the trees in a nice, unassuming white.  So far so good. 

Now let’s pause for nice shot of some malted eggs, sitting on my new Jay McCarroll fabric. Ahhhh, pretty.  Ok, moving on.

Once the paint dried, we added a layer of Glitter Bond in uneven strokes for a textured effect. Next, while still wet, we sprinkled copious amounts of Chunky Glitter (in Frida’s Fuchsia & Sunset Pink) all over the trees.  Still relatively unoffensive in their sparkliness, right?  I mean come on, every thing’s better with glitter!  

Take a look.  Take a moment, even.  This is the last time the trees were even remotely redeemable.

In my mind, the next step in the process would transform these trees into kitschy pieces of nostalgic goodness.  Oh though, how I was wrong!  With glue-gun in hand, I started attaching chick Peeps in a spiral pattern.  The result was at best, lackluster.  So I added more.  I saw it was going badly but still felt compelled to keep going…and going.

So I’m standing there (my pregnant stomach acting as an unfortunate, glitter catch-all ), with sticky fingers and marshmallow goo running down my wrists thinking, “Ok, I can still save this. How can I save this?  I know, add more candy!”   Then came the malted eggs.    

I don’t know if you’ve ever used candy-coated eggs as a craft medium before but let me tell you, they are not the friend of  hot glue.  If I had been pouring hot lava onto chocolate bars, I would’ve gotten a better result!  I did manage though, to get a few eggs on my little-tree-of-horrors which of course, made it top-heavy—the weight, more than the 1″ stump holding it up could bear.  It was then, that I came to grips with the fact that this was going to be one hideous holiday project and bid it adieu.   My poor Peeps.

I could tell by the look in my husband’s eyes that he thought this was some kind of karmic punishment for the fact that we’re vegetarians, but I was still using a gelatin-based product for a project.  He’s not a Peeps-le person, I suppose.  He prefers live animals.   Really though, I just think it was a bad craft day.  It happens to the best of us.

…And now, I’ll be stepping away from the glue gun and going back to my knitting needles for the day.