Dictionary Easter Grass and Nest Fill

Here’s a simple way to make colorful vintage-style Easter grass or nest fill using the very thin pages taken from an old, discarded dictionary. Keep the pages off-white or color them before shredding by using your computer and desktop printer.Begin by trimming the book pages to fit into your printer.

To color, simply create a very light block of color to fill a page using your software. I used varying hues of blue and green. Feeding one thin dictionary page at a time, print a color block onto each page. Yes, this is going to use ink, but not as much as you might think, just be sure to keep it pastel or screen back your colors to save printer juice. Also, I only printed one side of each sheet.

Once the pages are printed it’s time to shred. If you already have a paper shredder- bonus, although it may not shred the strips as thin as you may want. This morning when I worked on this craft, I first gave Martha Stewart’s fringe scissors a try. Not very successful as they really are meant for fringing and not so much for continuous cutting. Too difficult for this project unless you want only 3″ strips.

So, off to my awesome Genesis Paper Trimmer, I sliced small strips along the direction of the writing cutting several sheets at a time.I made a nice big pile of strips,

and fluffed, twisted and lightly squished the pile to separate and curl them a bit. (Then I had flashbacks of doing this with my brand new pom-pons in high school and was reminded of this shot.)

Ok, back on subject…Here’s the grass in action. ’Was hoping to find a few more colorful eggs in the coop this morning, but the ladies hadn’t finished their laying.

After taking the paper grass shots, I ran several errands before writing this post, dropping into my favorite thrift store in town between kid drop offs, only to find a little hand-crank paper shredder for 3 bucks. What are the odds? Seriously, this really is an easier way to go if you have one. But a paper trimmer works well, too.