Easter eggs

It's the custom to paint eggs red on this day.
So I woke up early to finish other things and then paint my eggs in my own way, quietly and hoping that they will look good.It always causes me stress if the red ones will be nice red ones and not too dark or with white spots.
Anyway I hang a red teatowel outside, that's a custom too, to show you are painting red eggs.

 First I slowly hard boiled my eggs.I let them cool.

 Then I dipped them into water,vinegar and red paint for Easter eggs for 5 minutes.

 Yes, they are ok!Great! Here they are inside my second ceramic bowl with Georgia Ahtida's egg in the middle.

And here's my bowl in the middle of the lovely fabric strip wreath Angeliki of Poco Loco made for me!

 And here's my minimalistic Easter decoration. My ceramic bowls, red eggs, Ahtida's egg, ceramic eggs (store bought years ago), a Hama bead butterfly (I will tell you about it in a future blogpost), and the little bunny I got from the Secret Bunny Exchange from Athena (organized by Zina).

I left a couple of eggs unpainted wanting to try some decoupage techniques I recently learnt at the Fiaxto workshop at IKEA.
I used an IKEA napkin, and white glue dilluted in water.

 I took off the white sheets from the napkin and was left with only the top sheet.I cut it in small pieces. I applied some glue on the eggs and stick the napkin and apply some more glue. Let dry well.

 The two eggs are covered in only one layer and therefore the colour of the eggs shows from underneath leaving a blue and beige colour combination. I also tried with more layers and had the blue and white  colour result but the texture of the egg surface isn't as good. Also I realised I should have cut the napkin in smaller pieces.

 Do you paint eggs for Easter?What kind did you do this year?

Watercolours, decoupage and pyrography!

After so many weekends of entertaining guests at home and going out a lot, last weekend I decided to relax, read a book and do some crafts.
On Friday I went to Ikea. I needed some frames to put in my triptych of jelly fish my friend Ian sent me from England.

I loved them on his blog and wanted one but he sent me all three as he is such a kind and generous person!

Look how beautiful they look in the frames which will decorate the beach house of course.

Another reason I went to Ikea for was because I had booked the Decoupage Workshop organized by Ikea and the ladies from Ftiaxto Elina and Valia.
I have done very little decoupage so far and really wanted to try.
Here is what we made under the instructions and supervision of Valia and Elina.

Ikea offered the items we decoupaged and the napkins.

All in all it was an interesting workshop. I plan to go to more in future if they organize some.

You can see how to make the clock here.

 And then on Saturday I decided to put in use a lovely tool we had bought in a very reasonable price from Lidl months ago. The pyrography tool was great and I loved what I made.
I used some leftovers pieces of wood from the new shadow puppet stage hubby made.
I sanded them a bit to have an even surface and then using the pyrography tool with all the different edges I burnt out the patterns.
I really loved the results and plan to make more.
I have always been inspired by Geninne's and Alisa Burke's pyrography beauties. So here are mine.
Empire State Building

 The little wooden huts in Turku Finland at the Craft Village.

The Dandelion

Greece in summer.

Feathers

The owl

If you don't feel like making any pyrography pieces I have a friend Dimitra who makes really beautiful ones on her Decorasylum etsy shop. Have a look!

(photo taken from Decorasylum etsy shop)
( I have in no way been compensated by the shops, firms, blogs mentioned in this blogpost.This is not an advertising blogpost.)