Easter Carrots Door Wreath Tutorial

Many of you asked what became of the GINORMOUS carrots from my last post.  Well that’s an easy one, I made them into a Easter carrot door wreath.  Or do you call it a door hanging?  Oh I don’t know what you call it.  I made a giant carrot door wreath-ish thingy for Easter.  There you go, mystery solved!

Oh I know, you may be thinking I didn’t need monster sized carrots for my front door but I couldn’t help myself.  Plus, have you seen the Easter bunny?  Yeah, he’s huge.  I saw him at the mall once.   Big bunnies need big carrots.  And just to be safe, you may want to make one for your front door too.

 

Supplies for Freakishly Large Carrots

• 2“ Thick Foam Insulation Board
• Acrylic Paint
• Wire
• Utility Knife
• Green Tulle On a Spool
• Green Net Ribbon
• Hot Glue

Banner

• Burlap
• Spray Glue
• Acrylic Paint
• Straight Pins

I made the carrots out of good old foam insulation board.  You know, the kind you get at the home improvement store.  With my utility knife, I cut 3 pieces that were each bout 6” wide by 26” long.  I used a marker to draw a basic carrot shape on the foam and cut it out with the knife.

My basic carrot shaped looked like a rectangle that is tapered at the bottom.  Don’t worry if it doesn’t resemble much of a carrot yet.  At this point, mine wasn’t very carrot like either.  The yahoos in this house told me it looked like a stake, a sword, a lightning bolt and a hundred other things, none of which were a carrot.

 

Just mentally hit the ignore button and keep going.   My next step was to shave down the edges with the knife to round my carrot.  It is fine to leave the back a little flat since this is going to lay against a door.  Once I had it roughly the shape I wanted, I took some sand paper and smoothed out the last of the rough edges.  It sands super easy.

Now I have 3 pink carrots and it was time to paint.  I poked a wire in the top end of the carrots so I could hold it and then set it up to dry.  It was a worthy effort but I still managed to get paint all over me.  (What can I say, I’m gifted like that.)

It didn’t matter because the painting was fun.  I started with a basic orange and then when back with white and a little yellow.  I also used a knife to make some indented lines for texture. (Check out my previous post for more details)

Now you have 3 very large carrots or if you lived in my house 3 very large orange swords. Before I glued them together I laid them down to see how they would fit.  I used two on the bottom and one on top.  I ended up cutting off a piece of one of the carrots to get a fit better.

Also, I cut a triangle piece and glued it in the inside gap to help give the unit more stability.  I actually didn’t do this at first but ended up going back and adding it once I realized the flaw in my design.  I also added a little orange burlap to help make a better glue sandwich between the top carrot and the bottom carrots.  Oh and I inserted 4 short wires to help secure the top and bottom and glued it all together.  It kind of sounds like over kill doesn’t it?  I didn’t want it to fall apart on me.  The hot glue melts foam so use it carefully.

Now the top.  This is just tulle and ribbon loops.  The tulle and ribbon is tied at the bottom to secure the bunch.  I made 3 bundles, one for each carrot top.  I also made some wire pins and pinned the ribbon/ tulle tops to the carrot  as well as hot glued.

Easter Banner

The banner ended up being 21” by 3” but I cut my burlap about 44” by 5” because I planned on doubling it to make the banner thicker and stiffer.  Once I had my long piece cut, I stepped outside and sprayed one side with spray glue.

Then went back inside and I folded it over.  I was careful to smooth it out and make sure there were no wrinkles.  I didn’t worry about trimming it to the exact size yet because I will do that at the end.  With two layers the burlap is pretty stiff but I brushed on some water based polyurethane to give it extra body.  Do this on plastic because it will seep thru the burlap.  I sped up the dry time with a hair dryer.  Some people use Modge Podge or starch to stiffen burlap.  I had the poly (as in polyurethane) handy so I just grabbed that.  It probably didn’t need it but remember I’m all about the overkill.  Yeah that’s another gift of mine, taking a 3 step process and making it a 16 step process.  Oh sad but true.  Now I am ready for some text and painting.  I typed out “Happy Easter” on the computer and printed it.

I had to tape two pages together because the text was longer than what I could print on one page.  Now for the transfer, I used tracing paper but I can’t say it worked fabulously.

Burlap has so much texture that it made the transfer marks barely legible.  Even so, it was enough to work with.  ( Notice the font is different in the photo above?  This was my first failed effort.  After I had it all painted, I realized it looked like crap.  doh!  I had to start all over.)   Before I started painting, I used a fine tip marker to go over the transferred letters so I could see the lines better.  Now the fun part, paint!  (I like to get to the paint parts as you can tell) I painted the letters white first and then I went back with my colored outlines.

To be honest, burlap doesn’t make for an easy canvas because of its chunky open weave.  Needless to say, it’s doable.

After the paint is dry I trimmed up my banner to the size I wanted.  Lastly I secured it with a little hot glue and a couple of straight pins.

On the back, I used some left over tulle to make a hanging loop and secured it with glue and a straight pin.  I hope I didn’t get too wordy on my directions.  It is easier than it sounds.  Well there you have it, Easter carrots large enough to be seen from space.

Happy Creating & Happy Easter Everybunny!

Check out these great sites I will be linking up to….(here)
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