DIY Tiered Tray Set Painting

I was looking for some fun Easter craft supplies for my shop and discovered, tiered tray sets.  I decided to do one up myself to create some finished project photos and now I am ADDICTED!

Even if you're not super crafty, or great with decorating or short on space, these sets make it easy to create something lovely for the season (or everyday).

You simply paint and assemble the various dimensional elements and then place them with some little plants & knick knacks for a pretty themed look you can put anywhere.  I'd seen a few dimensional sets like these and just assumed you had to be some incredible detail painter to make them look good, but the secret is that they come unassembled so you don't have to worry about staying in the lines.  

I researched a bit and discovered that there were a few videos on YouTube showing some ways to paint them, but not very many and almost no blog posts.  I like to do a quick read and then jump in to a craft rather than watch 1/2hr long videos that have a lot of filler chatter, so I thought I'd put together all the best tips I learned (and some of my own) for doing tiered tray decorations.

Tiered Tray Set Painting Tricks

This particular set is for Easter & has these layered elements:

It's recommended to plan out your color scheme and group the elements by color to be efficient.  For mine I chose an off-white, sage green, butter yellow and chocolate brown:

I did all my painting on freezer paper (shiny side up) to keep things clean and no-stick.  

The trick to painting without brushstrokes is to use foam makeup wedges and dab the paint on.  Super easy and drip-free too:

To make it simple to do the little pieces like letters, put a strip of painter's tape sticky side up and put the pieces on it.  Then you can hold the tape rather than the pieces.  Less mess and easier to coat:

I gave all the light colored pieces a double coat of paint.  The trick to keeping the cut-in lettering nice & contrasting (unpainted) like the Matthew 28:6 here is to dab gently with very little paint in those areas and use a wet toothpick to remove any paint that does get in the grooves:

To smooth the finish, go over them gently with a high (fine) grit sandpaper.  If you want to distress them, sand a little harder.

When dry, I grouped all my elements back together:

The detail pieces for mine were self adhesive so I just peeled the backing paper off and stuck them in place:

You can seal them with a poly spray if you want - especially if using for outdoors.  I strung the banner elements on some baker's twine:

As someone who's free time is in short supply, I really loved how quick these came together and how fun it was to style them up.  I also like that they don't take up a ton of storage space out of season, unlike wreaths and bigger decorations.  

I used mine on a tiered tray, but they are also ideal to use in wreaths or turn into magnets.  I could also see adding some pretty ribbon loops and hanging them to make an Easter tree too.

I bought this lovely tray off Amazon here.  The quality is really nice for the price and it also came with the wood bead garland.  My faux plants and flowers were all from Hobby Lobby.  I know I can easily use them in other ways when it comes time to change the decor.  You can find this set and others like it in my shop here.  Happy decorating! 

Easter Fabric Bundle Giveaway!

I'm celebrating the arrival of spring with a special Easter fabric giveaway!

It is HARD to find fun gifts or fabrics for Easter that go beyond the bunnies & eggs to the real point of the holiday.  To fill that void, I've been creating new fabrics & patterns for my shop to really celebrate the meaning of Easter.  I wanted to give someone the chance to win some of them to make their very own Easter items and share the celebration that He Is Risen:)

Sew up wonderful additions to an Easter basket or a fun Lent activity.

And have all the key figures for an authentic holiday theme:

First up is The Easter Story Panel & Dual Project Pattern.  The fabric panel features all the key figures of the real story of Easter and a tomb scene backdrop for acting out the entire story.  

It makes a full 18 piece Easter set and comes with printed directions for two complete project design options:

A Soft Toy Play Set

Which has 17 character & accessory stuffed toy pieces,

that are perfectly sized for little hands and pretend play.

plus a 18" w x 9 1/2" h background scene pillow. 

That also doubles as a storage bag for all the figures:

or

A Felt Playmat Tote

Which makes 17 Felt backed character & accessories plus a 18"w x 21 1/2"h background play mat tote.

 Complete with handy storage pocket and handles to take it anywhere or to hang the mat as a wall panel for play.

Either one makes the perfect way to share & teach the story of Easter - in a beautiful play set all ages can enjoy!

The 100% sateen cotton panel measures a full 36"h x 19"w and comes with the detailed paper instructions include step-by-step photos for making either project (the panel itself will make your choice of 1 project).

The panel figures and scene can also be cut apart to use as appliqués or for decorations.  One clever customer used them for a no-sew Easter-themed bulletin board:

  

I'm also including 1.5 total yds of additional coordinating fabric needed to make the winner's choice of set,

and a matching Story of Easter Fat Quarter Panel, that can easily be made into a pillow, gift bag, table runner or wall hanging:

Enter here for a chance to win.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Meaning of Easter Sensory Bin

This year I've had a lot of fun "crafting" sensory bins for my two toddlers.  With time to craft in very short supply around here, it's allowed me to use my creative side with our homeschooling to make something fun, but also educational.  My latest version was created specifically for this week:  Meaning of Easter Sensory Bin.

I'd seen a number of cute "Easter" themed versions with the usually chicks, bunnies and eggs, but nothing that really included anything Christian or Jesus-related.  That's the point of Easter, right?  So, I put my thinking cap on to create one!

My starting point was this cute sets of finger puppets (disclosure I carry these in my shop here).  It has all the key figures of the Easter story - Jesus, the Marys, the angel, a solider, John & Peter, in soft silicone:

I used a piece of wool felt for the ground in our bin.  I got this faux rock cave at the pet store in the fish section to use as a tomb.  The hole is the perfect size for the figures and there's also a hole in the bottom to make it easier to get them in & out and, since it's meant for fish (that are sensitive to chemicals just like little kids), it's also non-toxic:

I found a cool 40 pc set of rock blocks here that came in lots of colors and sizes.  The biggest was just the right size to roll in front of the tomb opening.  

The blocks stack really well and can be sorted in many ways, so they add a lot of sensory action.  I'd also recommend this particular set as they are choke-test and non-toxic certified.  There are a lot of cheaper sets out there that aren't, and seem to be smaller, so I didn't think it was worth taking a chance on to save a couple of bucks.

A 4 inch wooden handheld cross (also from my shop), was the perfect scale for our figures too.   Surrounding the cross with some rock blocks keeps it upright too.  

A few different sized plastic eggs are ideal for putting the figures inside, as well as some paper shred style Easter grass to add some more interesting texture and additional places 

to hide them.

Besides being fun with colorful shapes and textures, it's a nice way to give my little ones some holiday-themed play and introduce them to the Easter story in a way they can understand.

Happy Easter!

My DIY'd Little Lamb Easter Baby Dress Set & Teether

What could be sweeter for Easter for a baby girl than a little lamb outfit?  I thought it would be an ideal change from the usual bunnies & flowers and better suited to the meaning of the holiday.

 

I couldn't find a pattern that had all the features I wanted: puff sleeves, full skirt, pullover neckband, so I drafted up my own. 

 

 

Since the weather here usually is chilly at Easter, I also made a coordinating pair of leggings with the Ottobre Design Lola pants pattern:

 

 

I used that pant pattern it just a month ago with this outfit:

 

 

The fabric I used this time was a soft rib knit velour, that is cuddly, but light in weight:

 

I also used it for the neckband on the dress and the color was a perfect match:

 

I also found some decorative lace elastic in my stash so I added that as an extra detail on the sleeves:

 

I even made a matching silicone teether toy (and one to send as a gift for my baby nephew too):

 

 

I'll be honest though, I didn't think this new Easter outfit would be done in time.  I literally just finished it and it was 50/50 until the last stitch that I was going to have to scrap the dress and scramble to do something else.  The fabric was super cute, and I'd bought it months ago eagerly waiting to use it for Easter, but it just didn't seem to want to cooperate.  Literally everything seemed to go wrong. 

 

 

There were several times when the thread randomly bunched up during basic stitching.  Total bird nests.  The fabric curled quite a bit when cut and shifted around a lot when sewing too, even when well pinned and using a walking foot.  Even with fresh bobbin, re-threading & fresh needle it was fiddly, which was odd since euro knits usually sew like a dream.  My seam ripper got a work out!

 

My gathering technique with cord for the skirt portion normally works well too - where you baste a wide zig-zag around some thin cord to easily pull the ends & gather.  This time the cord kept jumping as I stitched so it threaded through the cord in a number of spots.  That meant I couldn't pull it without snipping those stitches.  It should look like this, captured between them:

 

And I'm not going to totally blame the fabric, because I may have made the sleeves a little tight with the elastic as well. 

 

 

When I first stretched the elastic to gather the sleeves it didn't seem to cinch up enough and looked too loose despite it being several inches shorter than the sleeve width.  I tried steaming it to shrink up a little, but it did nothing.  So I unpicked an entire sleeve and stretched the elastic a bit more as I sewed, which looks better, but may now be a bit too snug on her chubby arms.  

 

I'm going to try it on her today & if it is I may do a chop shop on the sleeves to remove that section and re-hem them (thank God I made them a little longer than I usually do so there's a little extra length there!).  I also ran out of my favorite fusible tape, which makes hemming on knits that curl MUCH easier, so there was more messing around to finish that too.

 

I was really pleased with how quick the teether toys came together though.  I'd bought the beads from different places, but I feel like they paired together really well:

 

I'd originally planned to make them circular but didn't like how they looked as I threaded them, so I did clip versions instead and these cute angel wing heart teethers I had in my bead stash were perfect for the tail ends:

 

When all is said & done, the outfit did turn out as I'd imagined despite the hurdles.  I'm going to try my pattern on another fabric and if it works out there, I'll make it into a free PDF & tutorial.

 

 

Happy Easter!