Oodles of Bunnies

Well, it's officially Spring and Easter isn't too far off... so I've been busy with an Easter project that involves bunnies, and then bunnies also became the theme of a set of gifts we sent off to various couples that we know who are expecting this year.

First, the "baby" bunnies


These little guys are 10 inches tall and made from mint green fleece. They have peachy fleece cheeks and felt eyes, all handsewn on. We know 4 couples that are due this year, including 2 from our families (Lucas' brother, my cousin) and so we wanted to send something cute and cuddly to congratulate them and wish them luck. Don't worry, I added a note to the tag to remind the expecting parents to remove the ribbon before giving to a little one. (because someone always asks.)

So there are the first 4 of a total of 12 bunnies I've made in the past week. Next up, the Easter bunnies! These will be gifts to our family members - my family in Indiana, and Lucas' family in BC. At the time of this writing I've got 4 of 8 completely finished and the last 4 are halfway done and just in need of some facial features and accessories.

Made from the same template, these are also about 10 inches tall and made from fleece with the same fleece and felt features. The biggest difference here isn't the color of the bunnies, but the fact that they come bearing gifts! In the left hand of each bunny you can see that it's holding a string, and hanging from the string is a tiny plastic Easter egg. Each egg has little hinges that allow you to open it and stick lots of goodies inside. An Easter gift that carries additional gifts... how genius! The real genius with this idea was Lucas, who saw the plastic eggs in a large variety pack at Michael's this weekend. I was originally just going to make 2D eggs from felt to have each bunny hold in their hand, but he saw these eggs and noticed that each had a pinhole in the top so I could easily string them up and sew the string to the bunnies' hands instead. I think they turned out much better this way!

So what kinds of goodies do I plan to put inside? I originally decided to make a set of spring magnets to put in the eggs using the glass pendant technique I described in an earlier blog. Lucas (always the genius and such a supporter of my crafts) suggested putting each of our faces on one and our dog's face on one to make a complete set of 3 magnets. The small pictures of us aren't showing up very well using the glass pendant idea, so I pulled out the bottlecaps I'd saved from our last poker night and started painting them. The idea is that I'll put a photo of each of us inside the painted bottlecaps, gloss and seal them, and then glue the magnet on the back. They're a work in progress, though. So far I have only painted the bottlecaps. Eventually each bunny will be bearing gifts of magnet sets ;)

Whew! I think once I'm done with all of this and have shipped off the last bunny I won't be making anything that has to do with bunnies for a very long time.