Easter/Halloween Baby Announcement!

It just so happens that Easter falls about 6 months before Halloween... and if your due date is Halloween (as mine is!!), then your first trimester is just about over right when Easter hits! As a holiday-loving family, we are super psyched to use any excuse to celebrate any holiday and do some holiday crafts!!  Lucky for me, I married a crafty man, so this all turned out exactly as I'd hoped.

Supplies

2 complementing colors of craft paper
Glue stick
1 egg dye kit + vinegar and water
Some eggs (we used 3)
A little nest (we got ours at Michael's for about $3)
Greens of sorts (we just so happened to go to the farmers market this morning and picked up some edible flowers!)
Colored markers (we used 1 gold and 1 black Sharpie)
Photoshop Skillz (thanks Ted!) 
Polaroid Cut-outs (from the scrapbooking section at Michael's or other craft store)

We started out by cutting the paper in a cute banner shape - the lighter color paper is the top sheet and the darker color is the background folds so it creates a little optical illusion of being a "real" banner! Glue the back ends to the front so that you can lay it on top of the nest in one piece.
 

Next, we dyed the eggs - unbeknownst to me, orange is actually a color already in the dye kit, but I went ahead and mixed 3 colors (red, orange, and yellow - after I'd put in the red and yellow I found the orange dye...) in an extra large glass. Of course I still spilled and made a big mess!! The red didn't disintegrate as quickly as the other two, so some of my eggs had big pink splotches and little dye grains on them! THIS is why it's good to dye more than 1 egg! There WILL be mistakes!
After 2 appeared to work well, I practiced drawing my little jack-o-lantern faces on them. I outlined the faces with the gold marker and colored them in with the black Sharpie. We decided we liked the bigger face with more teeth :)

Lastly, we ran around trying to find the best place to take a picture - this probably took the longest! We took one picture outside in a bush (the sun was too bright and the eyes were winking!), took a few on a black table but it looked a bit gothic, took a few on the dining table, changed the lighting, added greenery, etc., etc., and finally ended up with a great shot!!

After all that rigamarole, my handy hubby got to work Photoshopping! He added a "vignette" (the darkness around the outside) and the writing (much better than actually handwriting the banner!!) on both the banner and the top of the announcement. It turned out so cute!!!
 

We printed cards of these for our family announcements and placed our latest ultrasound picture (body parts labeled, still fairly blobby-looking ;)) inside a Polaroid cut-out. Then we wrote personalized messages to everyone's "new" name (i.e. Aunt, Uncle, Grandparents, etc.!) and either met the various recipients in person or mailed them a surprise! 

For Ted's brother Ben, we made a bonus gift (this time with my Fauxtoshop skillz! Yep, PowerPoint again to the rescue!!) and gave him a first-time Uncle special picture ;)

On Easter, we posted the announcement to Facebook! We're so excited to be parents and have a zillion reasons to have crafty adventures!

Comments

blessed_theresa said…
I am pregnant and due on Halloween this year. We want to announce Easter weekend but need to have it on poster board. Any creative ideas?
Katie-Did said…
Congrats, how fun! I bet you could do something similar to what we did with poster board OR do something with a little Easter basket, some of that fun Easter grass, and a little jack-o-lantern egg ;)
Unknown said…
Would you be willing to post your announcement as a template for others to use? It's darling, I just love the little face on your pumpkin-egg!!
Katie-Did said…
Thanks Phoenix! Unfortunately I'm not sure where we got the font, and my crafty hubby made it all - we won't be able to add it to the site before Easter this year, but we can consider it for future use! :) Glad you love the little face!!

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