Simple Spring Centerpieces

Mound hollowed out, painted or dyed eggs in a clear compote and add a little water. Then stick stems of delphinium and pom-pom mums in the crevices between the eggs. Simply beautiful.

Turn a handful of dyed eggs and a bouquet of carnations into a playful spring centerpiece. Fill a medium-size footed bowl with a few inches of water. Nestle dyed eggs in a smaller bowl (prop bowl on a dish if necessary). Cut carnation stems about 2 or 3 inches long and pack the blooms around the bowl of eggs.

Start with a large-mouth clear cookie jar or canister and place a clear drinking glass in the center. Gently stack dyed, hard-cooked eggs between the glass and jar, alternating egg colors. Fill the glass with water. Cut the stems of your favorite flowers (we used roses, gerbera daisies, tulips, hyacinth, and bells of Ireland) to the desired length, and arrange them in the glass.

Warm up your Easter table with this charming centerpiece, easily crafted from basic wood blocks and scrapbooking materials.

Arrange this fun and flowery Easter centerpiece by coupling a faux rabbit with an oversized egg. Then surround the pair with your favorite springtime blossoms, such as the crocuses and various primroses shown here.

Uniquely shaped containers add interest and drama to the simplest arrangement. This Easter bunny vase holds pretty spring flowers. The next two slides show you how to make this Easter arrangement.

Fill the container opening with dry florist's foam. Cover the foam with Spanish moss and secure with greening pins. Allow some of the Spanish moss to spill over the side of the opening. Clip the stems of the dominant flowers to the desired length and insert in the dry foam. The length of the stems should be in proportion to the size of your container.

Cut the stems of the secondary flowers, and tuck in between the dominant flowers. Let some flowers spill over the sides. Cluster and wire green leaves. Add them to the arrangement. Clip grape clusters from a stem of grapes, and using a 3-inch wooden wired pick, add them to the container, allowing the grapes to spill over the side. Fill in with green leaves as desired. Make a loop bow with two different colors of 1/4-inch velvet ribbon. Secure with 22-gauge wire and push it into the arrangement where desired.

Improvise a pretty Easter basket using a sweet straw hat. Fill it with softly colored eggs, either real or artificial. Hollowed eggs like ours can also be stuffed with paper ribbons that include spring wishes, egg hunting clues, or even names for place cards.

We made these affordable table linens using yellow gingham fabric. For the centerpiece, a white planter was tied with gingham and grosgrain ribbons around the top (use hot glue to secure if needed). Fill the planter with wheatgrass from a pet store and poke white silk daisies into the grass. A wooden egg painted pink and lettered with a paint pin nestles in a ribbon-wrapped ramekin full of wheatgrass to make a unique place card.

Turn an open round flower into a decorative nest. We've used peonies, but open roses would also be lovely. Cut the stems short and float on water in a footed dish or glass. Tuck a few little eggs in the middle and display as a centerpiece.

Vintage teacups make pretty containers for tiny flower arrangements. Fill the cups with well-soaked floral foam or use a small metal florist's frog, if necessary, to hold the flowers in place. Look in your yard or at the flower shop for small blooms, such as grape hyacinth or lily-of-the-valley, that match the scale of the cups.

Large chocolate bunnies bring out the kid in everyone. Set each place at your Easter table with a sweet like this and a place card dressed up with delicate floral stickers.

Glittering paper butterflies add a magical touch to an Easter basket. Color-copy or print butterfly images from copyright-free illustration books or CD-ROMs. Print two copies of each design and glue them back-to-back so they're two-sided. Gently bend up the butterfly wings, lightly spray with adhesive, and sprinkle with glitter. Let dry and glue several to an Easter basket.

Displayed on a bed of garden lettuce in a footed china compote, hard-cooked brown and white eggs grace a spring table. Vary the look by using colored eggs on top of a bed of ferns or hosta leaves. Or use a nest of wood shred and top with a pile of foil-covered chocolate eggs.

This table is filled with frolicking porcelain rabbits and fresh flowers to welcome family and guests with the colors and icons of spring. Use fresh flowers or, for an easier centerpiece, go with potted flowering plants.

Though the flowers in this stunning centerpiece, including hydrangea, larkspur, roses, and sword ferns, come from a florist, you could substitute garden flowers or blossoms from flowering shrubs. For maximum impact and the most natural look, gather the blooms into clusters of like flowers, rather than placing them individually into a more carefully arranged bouquet.

Most any type of candleholder can be transformed by using it to hold beautifully colored eggs. Consider setting eggs on a silver candelabra, brass candlesticks, or even inside little votive cups. Use tacky wax to secure eggs, if necessary.

Few things are more inviting than a white-on-white color scheme for spring. Here, a couple dozen hard-boiled eggs and a bunch of white tulips from the supermarket set the scene on a table filled with pristine white china and sparkling clear glassware.

Put the eggs in a clear glass bowl, add a few inches of water, and arrange tulips so the stems are in the water.

Blown-out raw eggs with small holes hold individual tulips at plate side. We've propped these in silver napkin rings, but egg cups or tiny votive holders might work just as well.

Tuck eggs -- either hard-boiled, plastic, or foil-covered chocolate -- inside a folded napkin. These can serve as place cards. Write a name on each egg or tuck a card behind the egg.

Copyright-free holiday illustrations are the starting point for these old-fashioned egg holders. (Books and CD-ROMs of these illustrations are available at bookstores and online.) Color-copy the images or print them from your computer; cut out and glue each one to a strip of colored paper. Wrap the strip into a circle large enough to hold an egg upright and secure ends.

Before using edible flowers as a garnish or in a salad, spray them with a gentle stream of cool water in the sink, then carefully pat them dry with paper towels. Use immediately. Never eat flowers from a florist, a nursery, or a garden shop; they may have been sprayed. The same rule applies to flowers you find growing along a road or in a park.

Inspired by delicate sugar eggs, these boxed displays are easy to fashion from small cardboard boxes. Cover the inside with colored paper and line the bottom with moss. Next, create miniature scenes with tiny baskets and toy chicks or with images cut from vintage Easter postcards. Give your display a three-dimensional effect by attaching cut-out images to a small branch (center) or by scattering additional elements, such as a piece of eggshell and individual paper blossoms, around the image (bottom).

Add a drainage hole to the container if it doesn't already have one. Fill with potting soil and plant grass seed about 1/8 inch deep, and then water. Place container in sunlight, watering every two days. Grass should be ready in five to seven days. Nestle colored eggs or stones into the grass.

Tulips shine with their own personality, and because they continue to grow after cutting, they'll even rearrange themselves in a vase. Here, the stems have been cut short to gather the flowers tightly into a mass of colorful ruffles.

Pink hydrangeas and grape hyacinths clustered in a crystal compote make for a supremely simple arrangement. A hidden grid of floral or transparent tape across the top of the bowl supports the cloud of blooms.

Pink peonies and orange tulips harmonize beautifully with green hosta leaves from the spring garden. Try gently folding back the outer petals of the tulips to show off their inner petals.

An abundance of fragrant blooms fills a pair of shapely vases. The exuberance of the large bouquet comes from the way its brilliant colors splash against one another, just as they might in the garden. For longer life, cut lilacs from the bush just as the flowers begin to open. Sweet peas make an impact on their own in the smaller vase.

This tall, slender vase gathers poppy stems tightly, allowing the blooms to burst into fireworks above. Cauterize freshly cut poppy stems in a flame to seal in their milky sap; these most fragile of cut flowers last only a couple of days.

A green-and-white scheme is easy on the eye and perfect for spring entertaining. This bouquet includes viburnum, French tulips, lisianthus, roses, and hosta leaves. After cutting viburnum, crush the ends of the woody stems to help them better absorb water.