Easter Cards 2017 - How to Entertain an 8-year-old

 

This week one of my closest friends asked if I could babysit her eight-year-old so she could go to a work event that ran a couple of hours into the evening. I was happy to help - this is the first time I've ever babysat on my own before but it hardly counts as babysitting when you're just hanging out with an awesome eight-year-old - she was flower girl at my wedding and we get on really well.

I'm sure we would have had no problem finding things to do but the night before I had an idea. I'd been thinking it would be nice to make some Easter cards, which I haven't done for years - in fact according to my blog the last time I made Easter cards was five years ago!

I thought my young friend might enjoy making some cards with me and I was right. I'd been out the night before so was rummaging through my craft stash at midnight to get some suitable bits and pieces for Easter - I didn't take a huge selection so the cards we made were cobbled together from what I'd brought with me!

We had a great time and spent more than an hour making nine cards between us. My young friend was very creative and was very pleased with the cards she had made which she addressed to various family members.

Here are three cards I made:

For this first card I chose a piece of patterned background paper - it's cream-coloured with a daisy pattern, and a border stripe along one edge with a flower picture near the top of the stripe. I glued a blue fabric flower (I only had them in blue) over the top of the flower picture and added a blue gem in the centre.

I had some sticky felt egg shapes which I put on the middle of the card but felt that something was missing; my young friend suggested drawing patterns on them to make them look more like Easter eggs which I did.

I used a 'happy Easter' outline sticker on yellow paper which I then mounted onto paler yellow paper (in retrospect I should have done it the other way round) and fixed two yellow gems on each end and stuck that on the top of the card.

 The felt eggs and blue flowers came from a mini card making kit I remember buying in a pound shop years ago. The same pack had some tulip-shaped flowers - but only the petals, not stems - and some small printed squares with an Argyle pattern. I used one of these in the centre of a card and stuck on the tulip petals, and used my friend's coloured pens to draw a stem and leaves. She suggested I draw a green line around the patterned square as well which I did.

I cut two strips from a piece of patterned paper which I stuck at the top and the bottom of the card and used another 'happy Easter' outline sticker to finish it off.

 

I wasn't really sure what I was doing with this last card. I stuck the remaining strips from the patterned paper I'd cut up for the previous card along the top and the bottom and had a big white space in between. I'd taken some rubber stamps and an ink pad along with me as I discovered I had a chicken stamp and some Easter eggs which I'd never used. I stamped the chick onto the card and the eggs next to it - the egg stamp had 5 eggs of various sizes that form a rectangle shape. I didn't really like the rectangle of eggs as it was so stamped it a couple more times at different angles to make it look like a pile of Easter eggs. I coloured some of them in but left a few plain and coloured in the chick as well.

I also had a stamp with the word 'Easter' - a shame it didn't say 'happy Easter' - which I stamped onto yellow paper and mounted that onto a square of patterned paper, and put that on the top of the card. In all it was a fun crafting session even though I don't think any of these cards are brilliant!