WATERCOLOR EGG CARTON FLOWER LIGHTS

Easter is coming! The season of chocolate bunnies and chicks, baby lambs, jellybeans, marshmallow Peeps and EGGS.

So. Many. Eggs.

And you can't have a million gorgeous dyed eggs, without having at least a couple of egg cartons, can ya?

A-ha. THAT'S where I was going with all of this ;)

Kinley and I are participating in an egg carton craft-off this week on Instagram, and until I started seeing all of the amazing ideas pop up in my feed, I had NO idea how much awesomeness is possible with such a humble recycled material. (If you wanna check out our competition, just search #getcreativewith--seriously, the possibilities are endless and crazy, crazy awesome!)

We had to step up our game, man! But, what to make?


I knew that we should use watercolors because they are K's absolute favorite art supply. And I figured flowers are super versatile, so maybe we should start with watercolor flowers and figure out where to go from there.

I cut the lids off of the cartons, and cut all the egg cups apart to start. (You are gonna need a nice sharp pair of scissors for this part.) Then I just cut triangles out of the sides of each of the cups that didn't already have them.

After I had all of the triangles cut apart, I got out Kinley's watercolors and we got down to business. Twenty-four egg carton flowers is a lot for a little ladybug to get done all by herself, so I gave her a hand ;)

It turns out the carton lids make really great carton flower holders :) Didn't they turn out pretty? K and I were both super happy with them!

Flowers: check. Now, what to do with them?

I tried to string them together and make a mobile with strands of them hanging down from sticks.

It looked gorgeous in my head, but in real life, not so much.

Then, I tried putting all of those flower strands on one stick.

Not so great either.

My brain was fresh out of ideas, so I sent a picture of the flowers to my friend, Sara, and asked if she had any ideas for them. She thought they would make cute headbands. Or wreathes. Or what if I popped them on Christmas lights?

LIGHTS?! Genius. That's it. A new flower nightlight for K's room!

I grabbed a box of white LED icicle lights from the basement and a screwdriver and Kinley and I got to work. I showed her how to poke a hole in the bottom of each egg cup with the screwdriver, and she did not need help with this part! :)

She poked the holes and I poked the lights through the holes. Teamwork!

Now, we only need to finish off three more cartons of eggs and we will have enough to finish the entire strand...thank goodness egg season is coming!

Her new flower nightlight looks awesome draped across her dresser and wound around all of the picture frames, Trolls figures and shrine to Queen Elsa of Arendelle. They are so bright we can read bedtime stories without the actual light on!

I think regular Christmas lights would totally work, but having the clumps of flowers because of the icicle light strands make them look super cool.

Thanks, Sara! :)