Supplies:

1. My design to make your cutouts.
   1. Etsy
   2. My shop
2. Wood or other thick material to cut out your design. You could also use thick cardstock, kraft paper, cardboard, and many other materials. Vinyl and/or cardstock if you decide to use this instead of wood for the bunny layer.
3. Tissue paper
4. A lighter. This was a fun technique to trim down the tissue paper, but you could just cut it by hand or with a cricut type machine.
5. Maybe some sandpaper to clean up your edges.
6. Yarn, string, ribbon, or other similar items to string up your banner pieces and to make tassels if you choose
7. Optional: wood beads
8. Paint and paint brushes
9. Glue. I used Gorilla glue and stick glue in this project

I started out with cutting my back egg shape layer and decorative layer with the bunny in the egg (they are labeled in my design) out of Birchwood on my Glowforge. For my banner I left my pieces the same size, which was about 4 inches high and 3 inches wide. You can size them up or down if you want, but just make sure to size everything the same so they will match up. I cut out 5 of the egg shape layer, and two of the decorative bunny in the egg layer. Feel free to cut out different layers to make it your own. You could cut out just the bunny without the egg shape around it.

For another alternative you could buy the egg shape wood background cutout from a craft store or Dollar Tree. Then cut the bunny part of my design out of wood, cardstock, or vinyl to place over your wood cutout. If you do not want to worry about getting the purchased wood cutout to line up exactly with my bunny design, then you can cut your egg shape layer out of kraft board, cardboard, a thick cardstock, or many other materials. You could even cut an extra piece out of veneer, a very thin piece of wood, then glue over your thick bottom egg shape layer to make it look like the entire piece is made of wood.

The egg shape is a basic shape that a Cricut Maker, with the knife blade should not have any trouble cutting out for you. The bunny inside the egg or just the bunny should also be a basic enough shape for a Cricut Maker to cut it out of wood with the knife blade. The Crisut Maker can cut balsa wood that is 1/32”, 1/16”, and 3/32” thick. It can also cut basswood that is 1/32” and 1/16” thick. There are hacks on how to get a Cricut Explorer to cut wood. I have not tried these, but you are welcome to follow the videos, which can be found on YouTube.

Once you have all of your pieces it is time to decorate. I started out by using a glue stick to glue down a fun flowery tissue paper to two of my egg cutouts. The egg cutouts are birchwood. I had seen this down once before on a short Facebook video, but I could not find it again. In the video they used a glue stick and tissue paper. I am not sure if other glue will work. I think if you use other glue you will need to make sure you really cover the edges and wait for the glue to fully dry before you move to the next step. I noticed the egg that I let the stick glue dry longer had cleaner edges than the one I glued and did not allow any dry time. I thought about using cardstock for the second egg, but I was afraid it would be too thick and would not work the same as the tissue paper. So, I used the same tissue paper for both of my egg cutouts. I then used a lighter to set my tissue paper on fire. The fire burned around the edges of my wood and created a nice clean line around my wood design. When the fire reached the wood, the fire went out. The wood did not catch on fire. I recommend doing this over a sink. The burnt tissue paper will fall off. Some of the burnt tissue paper did stick to the edges of the wood, but where easily brushed off. Just be careful to brush these pieces off in a safe place that can not catch on fire. I then took some sandpaper and quickly went over the edges of my wood to clean them up a little. I recommend watching my YouTube video to see this in action.

Next, I painted my other three egg shapes and the bunny cutouts. I let these dry, then I used my home-made stencil to paint a beautiful design over three of my eggs. I really love how well this design turned out. I will show you in another post how to make your own permanent stencil. I did not want this post to get to long. If you do not want to keep the stencil, then you could also use viny for a temporary one time use stencil.

Once all of my paint was dry, I glued all of my pieces together. I glued my painted bunny designs over the tissue paper wood eggs. I then cut some yarn to attach all my pieces to make a banner. I slipped some wood beads on my yarn between my wood eggs. I attached the wood eggs with Gorilla glue and attached a clip to hold them in place until the glue dried.

I also made some tassels for the ends of my banner. Please watch my video below to see how to make the tassels. It is difficult ty explain how to make a tassel in writing. You can also save my video in YouTube. Just click the YouTube icon in the video below to be taken to YouTube.

I was surprised the fire did not burn my wood and that it stopped at the extra tissue paper. It did not even burn the tissue paper on top of the wood. This was fun to try out. For basic shapes, just cutting the tissue paper with scissors might be easier and quicker, but for more intricate shapes/designs, this may be a better and quicker way. I really like how my home-made permanent stencils came out. Make sure to come back to learn how I made these stencils. These eggs would also be cute as individual egg decorations. Instead of attaching them to make a banner you could leave them separate and glue a small piece of wood (tumbling tower game piece) to the back so they can stand on their own. What will you make with my design: shaker, banner, individual egg decorations, or all of the above?