My Silly Bee

In case you noticed her... there's a bee posed at the foot of my Easter Egg Tree on my previous post. I made the bee a few weeks ago, before I started on all my other Easter decor. A few weeks ago... I had all these plastic eggs.. and all these materials and I was in the mood for some serious crafting...

...but I had no idea what to do. I had 'crafter's block'... you know, something like writer's block. I ran out of ideas. So I put all my stuff away and decided to make the beds in our bedroom instead. I noticed the bee in my daughter's pillow case looks like an egg. Without any other idea, I decided to try making a bee using one of my  yellow plastic eggs.

So I prepared these materials:

• A small yellow plastic egg
• Plastic eyes
• 2 strips of black felt, around 0.5 inch wide. Each piece need to be long enough to go around the egg.
• A small piece of gray felt
• 4 small beads (not shown in the photo)
• a glue gun
• felt marker

Step 1: Glue the black felt around your egg. Cut off any excess felt.

Step 2: Glue the other strip of felt around your yellow egg. No photo but you should have something like a yellow-and-black-striped egg.

Step 3: Take your gray felt and cut 4-petal shapes. I didn't use a template. I did trial and error to get them the size I want for my bee's wings.

Step 4: Glue the 4 petal-shaped felt to the egg, position them like the wings of a bee.

Step 5: Glue the plastic eyes on one end of the egg... I used the wider end of the egg for the face, and pointed end will be the sting end.

Step 6: Glue 2 small beads on top of each eye. And then glue 2 more beads on top of those beads. Wait for the photo.. you will see what I mean.

Step 7: Using the felt marker... draw the mouth.

I glued a thin stip of felt on top of the 4 wing-shapes to hide the edges.

She looks a little unhappy... I was actually aiming for 'clueless', like I was feeling at the time, but I didn't know how to draw a mouth to make her look 'clueless'. She looked a little out of place there so I decided to perch her on my lamp so she can be near the flowers:

I was checking Martha Stewart's site a few days ago and saw she has a project like this too.. making animals from eggs. She posted tutorials on how to make a few more animals from eggs. This is simple enough to be a kid's craft project. Maybe when Andrea is a little older, we can try this together and we can make happier-looking bees :)

I got over my crafter's block a few days after I made my bee :) The table with the lamp and flowers has been re-decorated with my painted jars here. And those flowers, they have been cut up to decorate my moss projects and my Easter Egg Tree and my wreath (yeah... I've been cutting up this bunch and now it's all gone).

EDITED 2011-04-14:

Amy from One Artsy Mama tried this project with her 2-year old. Isn't it cool to be able to craft with your kid? I wish Andrea was old enough for us to do stuff like this too. They also made other cute animals from plastic eggs like this chick and this rabbit:

Sooo cute! She posted the tutorial for these 2 cuties at her site so be sure to check them out!

Click here to visit her tutorial. 

I am linking up to the following parties:

Inspire Me Monday at Singing Three Little Birds | Tuesday Party at Running with Glitter | Tutorial Tuesday with Hope Studios | Get Your Craft On at Today's Creative Blog | Show and Tell at Blue Cricket Designs | Your Whims Wednesday at My Girlish Whims | Tuesdays To-Do at Blackberry Vine | We Did It Wednesday at Sew Much Ado | The Sunday Showcase Party at Under The Table And Dreaming | Linking Party at Passionately Artistic | Wednesday Link Party at Tea Rose Home | Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts | Wicked Awesome Wednesday at Handy Man, Crafty Woman | Get Your Brag On at Gluesticks | Creative Juice Thursday at Momnivore's Dilemma | A Crafty Soiree at Katie's Nesting Spot | Commercial Break Thursday at suzy's Artsy Craftsy Sitcom | Friday Favorites with Inspiring Creations | Catch a Glimpse at A Glimpse Inside | Thrifty Thursday Blog Hop at Saved By Love Creations | Thrilling Thursday at Paisley Passions | Feature Yourself Friday at Fingerprints on the Fridge | Finished on the 15th at Favecrafts | Weekend Wrap-up Party at Tatertots and Jello |