DIY Easter Tree and Ornaments

I am SO excited to share this project with you today! I’ve pretty giddy about it ever since I decided to do it and it’s one of those things that I already know is going to make my face smile and my heart sing every year when I pull it out in the Spring.

I made an Easter tree! I spent an afternoon making little DIY Easter ornaments and I’m going to show you how I made them, including a cute sewn bunny ornament that’s so easy and fun!

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that while I am not paid to promote certain items, I will earn a small commission should you purchase items through these links. For more info, see my disclosure policy.

I’ve been wanting to have some sort of Easter tree for many years, but just never managed to make it happen. A few years ago, I saw a picture in a magazine of a Scandinavian-style Christmas tree made from wooden dowels and wooden beads. I asked my handy husband if he could make me a mini Christmas tree for our Jesse tree ornaments, using that magazine photo as inspiration. He not only made me one, but made one for both our moms too. They are SO cool. (I thought for sure I’d posted a photo of it here at some point as Christmas decor, but I can’t find it, so many not.)

Of course, you don’t need anything fancy to have an Easter tree. Many people have made one fashioned from a tree branch and spray painted white (or not!), then placed in a vase of some kind. Those trees are so beautiful too!

So, even as he made me that tree, I had a plan to also use it as an Easter tree and this was the year I made that happen. I started gathering inspiration for ornaments, but I have kind of an aversion to traditional Easter colors and cutesy decor (am I the only one??) So I went to Hobby Lobby to see what inspired me.

Here’s what I came home with (although I went back for ribbon and beads, haha):

I started out looking in the Easter section, but nothing was appealing to me. I really wanted to keep it classy and stay away from the in-your-face Eastery look with the bright colors. Over in the wood section, though, I found those tiny wooden spools and flower pots and finally started to have a vision! I also grabbed the wooden egg for the topper, to replace the Christmas star. Over in the floral and bridal section, I grabbed the white eggs and some simple flowers.

A note about my wooden tree: I definitely plan to write a full tutorial for this with my husband’s help, but it will be in the Fall, in time for Christmas. It does come completely apart for storage, though, so the topper is interchangeable. It has a steel thread rod that goes up through the center, so it’s very sturdy!

I got to work on my ornaments, starting with the wooden spools, which were the simplest ones. I had fun hot gluing bits of ribbon around them as decorations. I bought some really pretty soft pink beads in the jewelry section and used very skinny ribbon as hangers, threading it through the beads on the bottom of the ornaments. It took some problem solving to thread the ribbon hangers onto all the different ornaments, but the beads turned out to be the perfect solution to help hold them in place and added a little something of interest to each ornament too.

Next I went to work on the flower pots. The pink flowers are actually paper! I simply hot glued the flowers into the pots, then threaded the ribbon through it with a needle, right through the paper flowers, and added a wooden bead on the bottom. Like the spools, the little pots have a hole in the bottom, making them perfect for this project. These are probably my favorite Easter tree ornaments!

Next, the little white eggs I found are styrofoam, so it was super easy to thread the ribbon through those. It’s helpful to use some needle nose pliers for things like this to help get the needle through. My beads had pretty small holes, since they were for jewelry, but my needed was larger in order to fit the ribbon, so it took some force to get the ribbon through. It was worth it in the end, though.

Lastly, I wanted to create some little bunnies as the finishing touch. Again, I didn’t want them to be too kitschy, so I brainstormed until I had an aha moment! Using my sewing machine, various colors of thread, and some wood felt, I free motioned simple bunnies!

“Free motion” sewing basically means that you drop the feed dogs under your throat plate so that you can move the fabric around freely, basically drawing with thread. It takes a little practice and every machine is a little different, so you’ll want to get your manual out to see which foot and settings to use, then practice on a scrap fabric. Most machines come with a special foot called a darning foot and in order to move the fabric freely, it doesn’t clamp down on your fabric like your normal foot does. When you look it up in your manual, it will probably be under “darning”.

To show you how simple these bunnies are, I created the following video. Hopefully this helps you see how easy and fast this is and will make you want to try something new if you’ve never done this before. :)

To finish them, I simply cut around the bunnies, added the ribbon and bead and hot glued a white pom pom onto the back of each one for a tail. I harvested the pom poms from some ball fringe that was in my stash. I made six, in three different colors of thread.

That’s all the ornaments I made! I loved working this project so much and I know I’ll look forward to taking it out each year. I’m not very big on holiday decor, even my Christmas decor is pretty minimal compared to some, but I do like to pull a few little things out that make us all smile and to denote the changing of the seasons.

I placed my tree on a little table by a window, on a vintage embroidered table cloth I picked up at an antique store recently. I scattered some styrofoam eggs around it, along with the leftover paper flowers and a bunny I’ve had since childhood.

Tell me what you think of the Easter tree idea! Do you have one? Or have you even heard of this before? I’d love to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Cheers :)

Nikki