Egg-citing Art

Perhaps Easter's most enduring symbols are decorated eggs. For generations, parents and children have dyed eggs together. There are many ways to give your decorated eggs fun new twists. If you want try something intricate, make an artistic mosaic effect using glue and colored broken shells from other hardboiled eggs. To create marbled or tie-dyed eggs, dip them in a combination of dessert whipped topping swirled with food coloring. Use Epsom salt to give your eggs a sparkling, "frozen" finish. If you want a project with less mess, make a colorful garland from leftover paint chips cut into Easter egg shapes.

Personal Prints

Young children love to paint with their fingers, and there are a lot of ways to transform both hand and footprints into Easter decor you will treasure for years. A hand traced on construction paper and wrapped around a straw for a stem becomes a graceful lily with fingers as petals. Turn a young child's footprints into bunny ears by dipping her feet in pink paint, stamping them on white or gray construction paper and cutting around them into the shape of bunny ears. Paste them to the back of a paper plate donning eyes, a nose and whiskers and you have an adorable bunny face. You also can make cute carrots out of fingerprints. Older children can make egg stamps out of potatoes. All you have to do is cut a potato in half, carve a pattern into the flat surface, and then dip it in paint and stamp on any piece of paper. Once the art is dry, you can hang it up or even use it as unique wrapping paper.

Joyful Jellybeans

One of everyone's favorite treats, jellybeans, also inspire some sweet craft ideas. Use some stretchy cord and a needle to turn a bag of jellybeans into a colorful and edible bracelet. Build a miniature "balloon" bouquet by piercing jellybeans with long wooden skewers. For extra fun, create an Easter basket out of large boxes of candy. Just glue the ends of four boxes (all the same size) together to create a square or rectangle, add one more to create a base or bottom of the basket, and then fill it with fake grass, eggs, candy, Disney books and more.

Get hopping on your Easter shopping with The Lakeside Collection. We have a wide selection of basket-ready gifts and candy to delight friends and family of all ages. Prepare for spring with Lakeside!