Monday, March 25, 2013

Swirly Bunnies for you!



Well, here we are a week before Easter and I think we may be a little crazy. Since Easter is soooo early this year, we just couldn't get stuff together to do a full ornament collection. Guilt set in, and over the weekend we scrambled to put together some Swirly bunny cupcake ornaments that we have been working on the last few days.

It is a first come, first serve basis! So make your selections quickly and email us your name and shipping address to sales@swirlydesigns.com. We'll let you know if you got them.

We'll send PayPal invoices via email unless you specify that you'd rather pay by check. Email us if you have questions.

The details:
Small bunny is $22 and the large one is $26; shipping will be $5.

The fine print: Because it's the week before Easter, we can't guarantee you'll receive them before Sunday, but we'll try our hardest!
These are the TWO LARGE BUNNIES
These are the TWO LARGE BUNNIES  $26 each
SDE~001 & SDE~002

Are small bunnies are all sold out. Thank you!
Your bunny will be delivered wrapped like a festive carrot.


Small Orange Bunny  $22 each

Friday, March 15, 2013

Holiday How-to Easter: Bunny Egg Treat Box

The two of us here at Swirly Designs are so happy to be working again this year with Polyform Products. Together we can share with you some wonderful seasonal how-to projects. Our first
project this year is one of our personal favorites. You can create this really sweet and practical
Bunny Egg Treat Box. Find the how-to here. You can fill it with special treats for your kids basket, add it to your holiday centerpiece or even make it the golden prize for your annual egg hunt.   

The clay used in this project is called Model Air, air dry clay from Polyform. If you haven't tried it, we would really recommend experimenting with it. It's perfect for this type of project because you don't have to cook your piece and worry about the papier mache egg in your oven. But it is a lot more messier than we are used to working with since we mostly have worked with a cleaner clay like Premo for our own designs. That did take a little time getting use to. We kept a spray bottle and roll of paper towels with in hands reach so we could keep our hands clean.... but  you know it's good to get messy especially when you're in your creative groove.
Our project shows how to make feet for your bunny egg, but we also created a few without feet. On those we just decoupaged the bottom half of the egg with colored tissue paper, paint mini flowers and added a dusting of glitter. These work great to compliment your footed bunny. They also work if you plan on keeping them in a basket because they tend to be a little top heavy and roll over without the feet support. 
 
Let your creativity go crazy and paint your bunny to fit your own holiday decor. 

These are all the versions of the bunny egg we created for this how-to project. Once we made one they just started muiltiplying. :-)
The bigger the papier mache egg you choose to use in this project the more treats they can hold.
If you like this project and want to keep seeing Swirly Designs create more, be sure to visit Polyform Products facebook page and share your thoughts. You can also visit the Swirly Designs facebook page and share your feedback and share pictures of your finished Bunny Egg Treat Box.
Have a fun and Swirly Easter!
xo Lianne & Paul 
This project is for personal, non-commercial use ONLY.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

How~to: St. Patty's Day Shamrock Picks

Swirly Designs is sharing a little Luck O' the Irish with you today! Join us and craft up this simple Shamrock Pick to fancy up your dessert table this Saint Patrick's Day.  
It's easy! Let's get started:


Materials: 
• Green card stock (solid or you can use a print)
• 1/16" hole punch
• heart shape punch
• mini circle brads
• bent nose jewelry pliers
• toothpicks
• green food coloring
• small bowl 
  
Step 1.
Following the direction on the food coloring box, mix the shade of green that will complement your green paper. Add in your toothpicks and let them sit approx 15 -20 minutes. The longer they sit in the solution the darker your toothpicks will be. 
Step 2.
Remove toothpicks from the dye and let them dry completely.
Step 3.
Take some green card stock and a heart shape punch and punch out three hearts. (You will need three hearts to make one shamrock so for every one you are planning to make times by 3)
Step 4.
Stack the three heart shapes together and with a 1/16" hole punch, punch a hole about an 1/8" up from the bottom of the heart shape.
Step 5.
Insert a mini circle brad through the 1/8" hole in all three heart cut outs.
Step 6.
Open the brad ends and lay your dried tooth pick in the middle, and then close the brad.
Step 7.
Use your bent nose jewelry pliers to secure the brad tighter to your toothpick. Then spread apart your hearts to create your shamrock.
Once you get one done you can really crank these out fast. Use on your cupcakes, Irish soda bread or you can write your guests name on each for place cards.
HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!!
~Lianne & Paul
This project is for personal, non-commercial use ONLY.

Monday, March 11, 2013

DIY Easter Egg Garland


Here is a simple project to dress up your staircase, mantel or door way just in time for Easter. 
All you need is a some yarn, a few bags of plastic eggs, a couple of thumb tacks and scissors.  
First cut the yarn to fit the length of your staircase, adding a few inches to make it "swag".
Then it's time to add the eggs. We really liked these transparent eggs because it allows the eggs to shine in the sunlight.
Depending how much space you want between your eggs will determine how many you will need. Open an egg, lay the yarn in the center of the egg and then snap it close. It's as  simple as that!
We decided to keep this garland simple but you can embellish yours even more by adding more eggs, put something in them, string beads or glue paper flowers between the eggs. Be creative. 
~Happy Egg~ster 

Friday, March 8, 2013

Always have the holidays on the brain....

We had an impromptu Lego day at the studio this week when the kids came home from school. They wanted to build some lego cars and have a race. So we sat down and dove into our sons many bins of Lego pieces to start creating. We had recently spent a whole weekend organizing his legos giving each bin its own color. But of course now we're thinking it might have been even more helpful to have each bin have sections for each different sized pieces. Alas that organizing challenge is not really the point the of this post...

When I was trying to think of what to make for my speedster, I was getting pretty overwhelmed with what to do. I was trying to approach this project as I would a new design collection - lots of research and sketches..blah blah. So I just stopped and observed how the kids were working. They just jumped right in and started building! No worries, no second guessing... just having fun. So I took a deep breath and dove in to make what I love and here are the results....I was rather impressed with my trio of Holiday Hot Rods.
 We have the Easter Bunny in his souped up carrot car.
 a haunted Halloween hot rod equipped with claws and spider web wings
and Santa's magical horse drawn sleigh.

All and all it was a fun afternoon even though the kids weren't as impressed with my creations as myself and Lianne were. It didn't help matters when I told them these were just too good to destroy so Daddy is going to glue them together when they were asleep ;)

Any fellow Lego designers out there?