Growing up, it was hard not to love Easter as a child. A long weekend, usually spent playing outside (if us Canadians were lucky enough to be greeted by some warm weather after a long, cold winter). And while childhood is long gone, I’m still a big fan of the first official holiday of spring.
It’s hard not to love a holiday that circles around chocolate, bunnies and fun colored eggs. Even as an adult, I’m a sucker for anything at William Sonoma with their “bunny” motif.
While I haven’t dyed eggs in over a decade, I love a chocolate egg hunt. In fact, each year I run around my office to hide 300 tiny chocolate eggs for my 60+ coworkers to find the day before the long weekend. It’s my way of catering to everyone’s competitive spirit while bidding hello to their inner child. Year after year it’s always fun to watch adults scour the cracks in the brick walls of our old, industrial-loft office for bright little foil-covered chocolate eggs.
Back at home, I’m just as cheerful around this occasion. Whether I’ll be hosting friends or family for an Easter brunch like last year when I posted about my napkin bunnies, or if it’s just a bookshelf scene for us to scout as we grab our morning coffee, I always look forward to dressing the house in Easter fashion.
Who am I kidding, I love all holidays, but Easter especially because it’s most certainly the cutest!
If you’ve seen some of my other decor posts, you’ll know I like to repurpose items throughout the year. For each holiday, I have a small box of items tied to a particular holiday theme that I’ll use to transform the bookcase. But these are really only supplemental items. If the “regular” items weren’t incorporated into my vision, I guarantee this bookshelf would be pretty sparse. It’s amazing what the imagination can do with a little creative thinking!
Traditionally, Easter has a reserved color palette. Growing up I only ever saw muted, pastel colors available to celebrate the occasion, but thankfully we’ve moved away from the blah.
Personally, I prefer a beautiful bright dash of blue, purple, pink, yellow or green that can stand on its feet. To soft, and it almost visually wilts. To bold, and it becomes distracting.
When choosing, it was also important to choose colors that complimented the existing color palette of my living room (and the rest of the condo). From the iconic blue couch to the little yellow house sculpture, everything currently lives in harmony, and I wasn’t about to disrupt the peace for the sake of holiday decor.
I’m a huge fan of PANTONE. In case you’re unfamiliar with the brand, they create colours for the use of virtually anything from fabrics to toner. More commonly, they are known as the company that decides upon and announces a new “Color of the Year” each year. This year’s feature colour is Living Coral, and I’m currently planning a party entirely around this theme.
Wanting to stay authentic to the PANTONE brand, I used their colour selection tool, available here. It’s completely free to use. For these free printables, I’ve actually pulled the colour specs and names of real PANTONE colours.
In the end, I landed on 4 colors that can be repurposed again throughout the year. I can already imagine featuring the pink and violet prints next Valentine’s Day , while I might have to recreate these in some fall colors come September.
These printables are very versatile, which is why I’m excited to share them with you for FREE!
They can be printed in a variety of shapes and sizes, like the large 9×9” prints that fit my small RIBBA series frames from Ikea (easily my favourite frames and the most flexible tool for holiday decor). But they could also be printed in a 4×6” format or any custom size if you go the no-frame route and have the prints mounted on foam core (more to come on that method in a future post).
Directions
To print, download the file(s) below. Unzip the files and open in Preview or Adobe Acrobat.
Under the “Page Size and Handling” section of your print window (or if you’re having them printed at a print shop like Staples), select the “Actual Size” option. Otherwise, the image may not print properly and may not fit your frame.
If you have a different size frame to fit, you can easily change the size of the image to be either larger or smaller. To Custom Scale the size, use the “Page Size and Handling” section and determine the percentage that you want to increase or decrease the image by.
Be sure to choose 1 sided printing. I’d recommend printing on a higher quality paper than standard copy paper. Using a thicker paper or cardstock will make the colors of the image stand out more and increase the quality of the print. Whether you’re printing at home or a print shop, look for a premium paper or a cardstock option.
