Ready for our first Easter Parade in NYC!

Mamatomo Mama
Mar 26, 2018
3 min read

Updated: Mar 26, 2018

It's our first Easter in NYC and we have heard a lot about the Easter Parade. If it's as colorful and creative as it sounds then we should fit right in!

There were a few stages involved in making the Easter headbands. I will cover each separately. We made them over two days. Day 1 - the kids were very much involved in helping. Day 2 was really just me hot gluing everything onto headbands once the paint from Day 1's activities had dried.

Stage 1

Painting the Easter eggs

You will need:

Plastic eggs

Paint - at least two colors

Glitter (if you like)

Paintbrush

A dish to pour the paint into

A sheet of kitchen paper to put the painted eggs on

Baby wipes or a cloth for very messy little hands!

We used plastic eggs that you can buy anywhere at this time of year. We squeezed different colors of paint onto paper plates - two colors is ideal. Have your kid cut into the paint to mix it up but you don't want to mix the colors too much or you won't have a marbled effect. We added glitter too.

Roll the eggs around in the paint, using a paintbrush if you like to make sure they are covered. Lay on paper towels to dry. This took a VERY LONG TIME because the paint was applied so thickly!

Stage 2

Make the tie-dye bunny ears

This was very easy and, again, something the kids could do themselves.

You will need:

For the tie die 'fabric':

Baby wipes

Elastic bands

Washable pens

To make the ears:

A wire coat hanger

Wire cutters to cut the coat hanger

Tie dyed baby wipes - one per ear

Glue

I found the idea on Pinterest here and it uses something most of us have lots of lying around - baby wipes! Grab the wipe in the centre and gather it up into a sausage shape, tie it up with rubber bands. I used three. Color in the segments with washable markers. We did a striped pattern with two colors. You do really need to make sure that you cover the wipe as much as possible. Untie when done and leave to dry out.

This was it for the day. We needed to leave the eggs and the baby wipes to dry out.

Stage 3

Prepare and assemble your headband

You will need:

A plastic headband

Wool

Plastic flowers or leaves

I wrapped the headband in white wool and glued each end. This step could easily be skipped if you already had a hairband in the color you want. I used a wire coat hanger for the ears, cutting the shoulder ends of the coat hanger with wire cutters and shaping into approximate ear shapes.

Wrap the tie dye wipes around the wire and glue. Tuck the ends around the wire to create as round a shape as possible and glue in place. Leave to dry.

Next I built around the headband using pom poms, sticking row by row with hot glue and making sure each pom pom was firmly attached to the next one. I put the ears on top and glued on, finally gluing more pom poms in front to create a sandwich, with the pom poms on either side and the ears in the centre. Make sure that they are firmly stuck together.

My daughter wanted flowers but my son didn't so we bought cheap plastic flowers from the dollar store and pulled them apart (they were cheaply made so this was easy!). I just glued and stuck, glued and stuck. Son had eggs and some leaves that came with the plastic flowers. Daughter had flowers in abundance and eggs. They told me where they wanted things but I did the gluing. It was very important to make sure that the eggs were glued firmly to whatever was next to them. I used lots and lots of hot glue sticks. I think it was a personal best actually! Lots of glue was needed to make sure that everything held together well.