Faux Chocolate Bunny – With Wood Rabbit and Gold Leaf

You can’t eat it, but the Faux Chocolate Bunny I made for Easter decor is pretty cute.

Plus, you can decorate with it year after year. That real chocolate bunny you bought won’t even last a day.

Let’s hop right to the how-to.

Here’s what you need to make a Faux Chocolate Bunny:

wood bunny (set of 2 in this pack)
dark brown stain or paint
gold leaf
gilding adhesive or Mod Podge
small paintbrush
Polyurethane or Mod Podge for sealing

How to make a Faux Chocolate Bunny:

Step 1: Stain or paint your wood bunny. 

I used a honey-colored stain, but dark brown paint would work too.

Here’s how the wood bunnies look before staining. They are made of some sort of pressed sawdust product and have an ear-resistible charm in their natural state. I wasn’t sure how well they would stain, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Step 2: Follow the directions on the gold leaf package to apply it to the wood bunny.

I’m going to tell you straight up that I didn’t follow the directions to the letter. As it turns out, there are no gold leaf police! This is a good thing because, for the purposes of this craft, I decided the directions were more of a broad guideline, not a hard and fast rule. It worked out fine.

I used Mod Podge as my adhesive and brushed it on the bunny where I wanted the gold leaf to stick. My approach was a little haphazard, as if a kid had been enthusiastically tearing open a foil-wrapped chocolate bunny.

I waited a minute or two for it to start to get tacky, but not so long that the gold leaf wouldn’t stick. I used my finger to press the gold leaf gently in place. Then I set it aside to dry.

Once dry, I used a clean, dry paintbrush to brush away the excess gold leaf. It doesn’t take Mod Podge long to dry. Make sure there is no breeze blowing through your house when you do this step or you’ll be cleaning up gold flakes until next Easter. I set my wood bunny on an old, plastic cutting board and tried to keep all the gold flakes on the board so that I could pick it up and carefully dump it in the trash can.

You can also repeat this process if you think the bunny needs more gold. This might be one of those ‘more is more’ times!

Step 3: Seal the wood bunny with polyurethane or some other clear sealant. 

I used two coats of polyurethane in a satin finish to seal my faux chocolate bunny. A glossy finish would have been more realistic, but sometimes you have to craft with what you’ve got.

Glossy Mod Podge would work too.

Step 4: See if the faux chocolate bunny fools your kids from a distance.

This step is optional. My teens did think I was making real chocolate bunnies at first glance.

It might be time to visit the eye doctor.

This is one of those crafts that is so adaptable to your vision.

If you start with the blank slate of the wood bunnies, you can paint them, add a bow, glue them to a wreath, cover them with plaster, and so on. Heck, maybe you like them in their natural state. That’s cool too.

I just saw someone cover a wood duck with tiny, hot pink disco mirrors. It was the happiest thing I’ve seen in a long time. You could do that to one of these bunnies!

Oh, the possibilities, and it’s a hare-raising good crafting time too!

How do you feel about Easter crafts? How about Easter candy? Let me know. You can always comment on this blog post, email me here, or reach out via Instagram or Facebook.

Happy Crafting!

Thanks for going down this bunny trail with me today! If you’d like another idea or two, I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest one of these. Enjoy!

Easter Egg Embroidered Napkins

Gold Leaf Wood Easter Eggs

Easter Egg Painting With Actual Eggs

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