It's a Creative World: Getting ready for Easter

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We are a diverse group of talented, fun loving, crafters who want to share loads of great stuff with you. Inspired by colour, paper, fabric, nature, patterns, sounds, architecture, we love to create and we're not afraid to experiment. We have our roots from around the world and are constantly learning and gaining inspiration from the world around us. We hope you enjoy your visit to our blog.

Getting ready for Easter

Hi everyone can you believe that Easter is soooo early this year???

Here a just a few ideas for Easter:

Biscuits for Easter from Di:

Koulourakia is the traditional Greek Easter biscuit and they are delicious:

You can find recipes on the internet and here is a great source. HOWEVER, my sister has a great recipe that she has used for 30 years!!!! This is Lin's tried and trusted recipe:

Just a few hints before we start:

The butter should be soft
Cream the butter and sugar until it turns a creamy white
Set the oven on 180 and turn down to 160 when the biscuits go in the oven.

Here she is, my sister Lin the legend with her favourite toy the Kenwood mixer:

OK your final mixture has to be sort of like play dough so that you can roll it into a ball and then into a sort of pencil shape:

Here they are twisted and dipped in beaten egg then sesame seeds and ready to to go in the oven

And here they are ready to be munched LOL mine are the big ones on the right!

Trivia:

When and how long is Easter? Why is never the same each year????

Easter Day is always on a Sunday, but the date varies from year to year. Many years ago Christians decided that Easter Day should be always be on the Sunday following the first full moon after the first day of Spring on March 21.

This means that Easter can be as early as 22 March or as late as 25 April.

AND what's more it can be on different dates in different parts of the world!!!!

In western churches such as in the United Kingdom, Easter was celebrated on April 16, 2006 whereas in Eastern Orthodox churches the date was April 23. The reason for this is that in the west the date is calculated using the Gregorian calendar which is different to the Julian calendar which is used in the east.

And what about the Easter Bunny???

Rabbits have been associated with springtime since ancient times. It is believed that a symbol of the Anglo-Saxon Goddess of Spring Eostre was the hare. It was Eostre's sacred animal since it was a symbol of fertility and the rebirth of nature following winter.

As rabbits are similar to hares and are very common everywhere, Christians changed the symbol to the Easter bunny. So the modern symbol of the Easter bunny comes from pagan times.

Over to our very newest design team member Jakey!!!

Crafting on a budget? Crafting on the cheap? (cheep.. hee hee!)

A quick and easy centrepiece for your Easter breakfast table can be made with Styrofoam eggs (from a craft shop or hobbycraft), some acrylic paints, and a few scraps from your stash.

I painted an old ally can with a coat of gesso and then brown acrylic paint. When it was dry I gave it a quick coat of clear varnish, to give it a nice sheen.

Paint the eggs with gesso, and set aside to dry. Once dry, paint in pretty pastel colours with acrylic.

Next punch small holes evenly round the can with a bradawl (or paper-piercer), the ally’s thin so it shouldn’t be hard to pierce. Decorate with paper/silk flowers attached with a brad.

Crumple some tissue saved from a gift box – or maybe shred and crimp thin paper, and use to line the can.

Once your eggs are dry decorate them with scraps of ribbon, brads, paper flowers, ric-rac or whatever takes your fancy! Pop them into the can with a couple of Easter chickies – and you’re done!