Easy Easter Tree Craft

I absolutely love Easter trees. They are so simple and elegant, yet somehow can dress up an adult room even when the kids make them. This easy Easter tree is made with beads and feather animals from my local dollar store. I spent a grand total of $3 to put it together.

What you Need to Make this Easy Easter Tree Craft

• A toilet paper roll
• A piece of origami paper or wrapping paper, cut to fit around the toilet paper roll
• Green tissue paper
• Play Dough, or something else to weight the bottom of the ‘vase’
• Sticks from your yard
• Curling ribbon
• Package of assorted wooden beads (use whatever beads you want, but make sure the holes in the beads are lard enough to fit onto the ends of the branches). The beads on this tree came from one coordinated package of beads
• Fake feather bird (I got  a package of two at the dollar store) (plus a paper clip if the one you buy doesn’t have a wire attached to it)
• Feather butterfly (came in a package of three at the dollar store)
• Glue
• Wire cutters

How to Make this Easy Easter Tree Craft

Stabilize the branches and vase

First you need to ensure the tree won’t fall over once you make it. Start by putting some play dough in the bottom of the toilet paper roll, and stick the branches into it. Support the branches on the sides with extra tissue paper, newspaper, or other scrap paper. If you don’t have play dough around, you can improvise. I used an upside down single-serve container of salad dressing. You could also use a Crystal Light tub for the base, but it’s not really heavy enough to stabilize the project, so you would need to put something else inside of it to give it a little weight.

Add Tissue Paper Grass

Next, wrap the origami or wrapping paper around the toilet paper roll, cut it to size and glue it into place. Then camoflauge the inside of the craft with tissue paper ‘grass’. Cut little squares of green tissue paper around 2″ square and twist them in the center (we called these ‘ghosties’ when we made homecoming floats in high school!). Tuck the ghosties into the top of the toilet paper roll until you can’t see the rest of the stuff inside of it.

Add your feather bird

The birds I bought at the dollar store had a little wire sticking out of the bottom, which made it super-easy to simply wrap the wire around one of the branches. You may need wire cutters to clip off the excess. If your bird doesn’t have a wire attached, unbend a paper clip and stick it into the styrofoam bird, and then wrap the other end around the branch. Do the same with the feather butterfly (I hot glued this on, because everything in life is easier with a hot glue gun around).

Glue the Beads onto the Branches

Now we get to decorate the tree! First glue the small round beads onto the ends of the branches. Space them out randomly and you don’t need to add them to every single branch. I used a hot glue gun because they are so easy, but little kids can do this with regular glue too. Just add a large-ish drop of glue to the end of the stick and pop on your bead.

Make mini Easter ornaments

Lastly, put together your mini Easter ornaments. I tied the top with a loop and bow, then slipped a small pink bead onto the bottom and slid it up to the middle of the ribbon. You may have to fold the ribbon in half to get it to fit into the bead hole.  Then I put a dot of glue into the bead hole of the larger yellow beads and simply stuck the ribbon end in. I actually think that because the wooden beads were a little rough on the inside, I probably didn’t even need to glue them, as it would have stayed on the end without it. I made only three of them, which seemed more than enough to keep this Easter tree simple yet pretty.

Easy Easter Tree Craft

Hang your mini ornaments and enjoy!

You may also be interested in this plaster handprint kit from Plaid Crafts. I used it with one of my children and to this day kick myself in the pants for not doing it with the other two when they were little!

Easter Bunny Painted Handprint Easter Bunny	Easter Lily Handprint Easter Lily Craft	Easter Basket Handprint Easter Basket Craft	Flower Bouquet Painted Easter Flower Bouquet
Easter Chick Footprint Easter Chick	Sun Handprint Paper Plate Sun	Spring Flowers Spring Flower Handprint Craft	Easter Bunnies Painted Handprint Bunnies
Easter Lamb Easter Lamb Craft	Butterfly Handprint Butterfly Craft	Spring Rainbow Handprint Spring Rainbow Craft	Easter Chicks Painted Easter Chicks Craft

Check out all of our handprint crafts and the rest of our Easter crafts and spring activities, too!

Easter Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppets

When I had to idea to create some finger puppets out of pipe cleaners, little did I realize what creativity I would unleash in my children. 3 packages of pipe cleaners later, I have enough different finger puppet ideas for probably 10 more posts! I had no idea these would be such easy crafts for kids.

Pipe cleaners are extremely forgiving and deceptively easy to work with. Anything you ‘mess up’ while bending them is fixable. And by using a hot glue gun, you are pretty much unlimited in how you can attach eyes, limbs, and embellishments.

Check out our Halloween Finger Puppets Craft, too!

What you Need to Make Easter Finger Puppets

Pipe cleaners of various colors

Mini pom poms of various colors and sizes (you can substitute cotton balls sometimes)

Googly eyes

Hot glue gun

Wire cutters

(Our local Dollar Store had great cheap coordinating sets of pipe cleaners with matching pom poms)

How to Make Easter Finger Puppets

Once you see the components of each of these pipe cleaner finger puppets, assembly is pretty self-explanatory. But here’s the key “puppet base” that they are all made from:

Finger Puppet Base

Step 1 is to take the pipe cleaner and wrap it around your finger. I like to do it rather tightly, because once it is off of your finger, it is easier to stretch it out than it is to tighten it up.

Important: Notice that the top of the pipe cleaner coils down to a smaller circle. Do this so that it is easier to glue the pom pom head on top, and to lessen the possibility that you will get the hot glue on your fingers (which, if it hasn’t happened to you yet, pray that it doesn’t. OMG.)

Here are the pieces of each of the pipe cleaner finger puppets shown above. I was skeptical whether the hot glue would work on some of these pieces, but it worked perfectly. Just put a tiny dab of glue onto the wire end of the pipe cleaner and stick it straight down into the pom pom – it will stick after just a second or two of holding it in place.

Easter Bunny Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppet

Easter Bunny Finger Puppet

After gluing the white head onto the pipe cleaner body, stick a dab of glue onto both wire ends on one of the bent pipe cleaner ears. Stick them firmly into the pom pom while squeezing the ends together.

Glue two tiny white pom poms on the face as a base to stick the googly eyes. This is really optional, and you can see on the kitten finger puppet below that you can also just glue the googly eyes directly onto the pom pom head.

Then glue on the pink nose and the medium sized pink pom pom for the tail.

Easter Chick Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppet

Easter Chick Finger Puppet

After gluing the white head onto the pipe cleaner body, clip a tiny piece of orange pipe cleaner and bend it into a V shape, and glue it onto the middle of the face. Glue the two yellow mini pom poms right above the beak to make a base for the googly eyes, then glue them on top of them. Take about a 4 inch piece of extra yellow pipe cleaner and bend it into the wing shape as shown. You don’t even need to glue these in, just slip them onto the body in between the coils and they will stay put.

Spring Kitten Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppet

Spring Kitten Finger Puppet

After gluing the white head onto the pipe cleaner body, clip two small pieces of white pipe cleaner (about 3/4″ long) and bend them into a V. Glue them onto the top of the head. I skipped the extra tiny pom pom eye base on this one, wanting to go for a more “Hello Kitty” look. You only need one tiny pink pom pom for the nose, but here’s a little tip: if you don’t have a tiny pom pom to use, you can clip a tiny piece of pink pipe cleaner (less than 1/4″ long) and glue it onto the face instead. The tail is attached by bending it onto the bottom coil on the back of the kitten’s pipe cleaner body.

Bluebird Pipe Cleaner Finger Puppet

Spring Bluebird Finger Puppet

To make this variance on the Easter chick, I omitted the mini pom pom base for the eyes, and added a little tuft of feathers on the top of the head the same way I did the kitten’s ears (but only added one and put it on lengthwise instead of sideways). The wings are also a slightly simpler version of the yellow wings, and might be easier for smaller children to bend on their own.