Each year for Easter, I make little knitted chicks to cover either a Cadbury Creme Egg (the best-selling confectionery item between New Year’s Day and Easter in the UK), or a plastic egg into which I’ve placed cash or a sweet treat.

These little knitted chicks with eggs inside them are cute and thoughtful gifts for friends, school teachers and our children.

 

 

 

This year I decided my little handmade knitted chicks needed little handmade packaging as well. 🙂

Here is how you can make the knitted chicks and packaging yourself. Please comment and let us know how it turned out.

Instructions for making knitted chicks:

I used size 3.25 knitting needles and Double Knitting wool.

• Cast on 26 sts. knit 1 row

• Increase 1 st. at the beginning of each row until you have 42 sts. on needle

• Cast off 11 sts. at beginning of next 2 rows (20 sts. on needle)

• inc. 1 st. at beg. of next 4 rows (24 sts. on).

• Knit 4 rows

• Knit 2 sts. and then knit 2 tog to the last 2 sts. Knit 2. (14 sts. on needle)

• Knit 4 rows

• Knit 2 sts. and then knit 2 tog. to end of row

• Draw wool through remaining sts. and pull together, sew with that piece of wool around to the beginning stitch, leaving the cast on stitches as a hole to place egg in

•  Use some excess batting to stuff the head

• Tie a ribbon around the neck

• Cut a small orange diamond shape piece of felt for the beak and hot glue the beak to the chick

• The eyes were made using two very small black pom poms that I got from Michaels.

 

Instructions for the packaging:

For this project I used the DCWV Creamy Cardstock Stack (it looks better when you use double sided paper).

• Cut 1 sheet of cardstock  4″ wide by 9 1/2″ long

• I used the Fiskers Grass Border Punch on one of the 3 1/2 inch ends but you can use any punch you want

•  Using your Scor-Pal score the paper at the 1″  mark from the punched border and again at the 3″ mark

• On the other 3 1/2 inch end I made two punched holes for the ribbon and to hold the clear bag in place

• Note that at the same time that I punched the cardstock I also punched the clear bag after making a fold on the top

This packaging can, of course, be used for other gifts and for other occasions just by changing the boarder punch shape. For instance, instead of a grassy bottom you could use punch “Lacey Days of Summer.” for a birthday gift packaging.

If you are finding it hard to locate the clear bags, let me know and I’ll put some on the BlueBrit Store for sale for you.

Happy crafting!