paint cut paste

oh-so-many colorfully creative ways to dye an easter egg floating around the web this year… we could not choose just one! we had to sample them all!

see our garden flags in the background?

we got out tons of supplies and started on our mission to color a couple dozen eggs!

from one of our old annual stand-bys of the melted crayon dye resist on the hot hard-boiled egg…

to blowing out eggs (until the veins in my neck burst) to create hollow masterpieces we can keep for a while (and keep out of the fridge!)

N tried it too - it was way difficult for her, as well

to decoupaging tissue paper patterns onto eggs a la the artful parent

to sticker masking

to shaving cream marbling (like we did with paper two years ago – and hey, it works on eggs, too! tip: try the darker colors for best results)

to food coloring in a strainer a la pink & green mama’s post

to botanical masking (gone wrong)

to toenail easter eggs

even some of our accidents were pretty…

cracked (oops) then double dipped in red & purple (N's fav colors)

…and some of our accidents were NOT pretty!

the contents of 6 hollowed out raw eggs dumped on our nice area rug

next year i vow to stray from the paas and food coloring to try vegetable egg dyeing. i’ve always wanted to, and have found some great recipes in the past. i LOVE the ones over at tinkerlab this year! but gosh, we had a lot of fun this week…

i also wanted to add that i was quite impressed with martha stewart’s egg dyeing iphone app! it’s 99 cents well spent for all of the inspiration it provides! (oh how i wish martha would give me a kick back for saying that!)

i’m saving some of these ideas for next year. once my neck and ears recover from hollowing out those eggs, i want to try more hollow eggs so i can create and decorate an easter tree with them since i didn’t get around to fulfilling that easter dream this spring.

all in all, it’s been quite an eggperimental easter week over here!

happy hoppy to you and yours!

oh, this is one of my favorites so far… i’ve been wanting to try this springy little idea ever since i saw it years ago (from martha, i believe) but haven’t gotten around to it until now. we made beautiful springtime candles inside of eggshells. we LOVED every minute of this colorful quest on this rainy, gray spring day!

i began by piercing a dozen white eggs with a needle, breaking away a small opening around it (leaving about three-fourths of the shell in tact,) and then dumping out the egg. make yourself a coupla nice quiches! create the opening large enough that it doesn’t trap smoke inside the shell when candles are lit. (and if you would rather put a tealight candle inside the eggshell than the melted wax method we’re about to show you, make it open enough to fit that in there.)

then we set out to dye the eggshells. i know it’s not very creative to just bust out the paas kit, but we had one left over from last year in the art cabinet, and i wasn’t feeling up to embarking on naturally dyed eggs this morning, nor the food coloring method. because N and i decided we wanted subtle pastel colors, we used the directions that just require the tablets to dissolve in water (instead of vinegar or lemon juice) so they aren’t so saturated.

we had to be very careful with the delicate shells as we did this, but they turned out so beautifully!

i liked how the insides of the shell were dyed a bit darker than the outside with this method.

N was loving the shells as they were! but they were soon to be candle holders…

next i melted soy wax in the double-boiler on the stove. you can use beeswax, too. (i happen to have a stash of lots of waxes from my old natural bath product biz.) you can find the soy wax shavings at michael’s for about $7.

we bought some 2.5″ candle wicks at michael’s for this project, and they worked out perfectly. when the wax is warm but not yet liquified, i spooned out a little dollop of wax into each eggshell and used it to stick the wick base to the bottom of the shell.

then i carefully poured the hot wax into each eggshell, about halfway full — or maybe more on some. we let them sit in the egg carton until they were hard and cool.

we displayed some of them in egg cups. you can get these at the dollar store, craft store, or grocery store. i found our solid colored ones at safeway for $2 each.

these cuties are from a local antique shop. love their expressions!

hilda & hulda

there are so many variations to this project – you can keep the eggs white and dye your melted wax different colors, use brown eggs instead of white for a natural look, dye only the insides of the egg by pouring the dye only into the hole, etc… use your imagination.

these make a beautiful addition to your springtime dinner table, spring nature altars, easter brunch table setting (serve up the quiches from the eggs you dumped out,) or a wonderfully creative hostess gift, packaged in little baskets with natural grass. how lovely would that be?!

hatch a little springtime light of your own!

i entertained the thought of naturally dyeing easter eggs this year. i’ve wanted to every year, and even found a great tutorial on martha stewart for veggie dyed eggs, but then we paased anyway. 99 cents for a paas kit is hard to beat, especially when compared to purchasing beets, yellow onions, cabbage, etc.

we did, however, try out some new strategies we saw all on the web this season. good stuff.

like using a rubber band on the egg (and double dipping) to block out certain areas:

and criss crossing electrical tape to make a grid (yellow and blue make green lesson here.)

i also tried to make a “cracked egg” effect on, well, a cracked egg. kinda cute.

as stepford as i feel saying so, martha is a genius. (or rather the people who work for her at her empire are geniuses.) i mean seriously,  look at this slideshow of eggs!!!

we did the usual crayon resist thang.

and all in all, we had some good springy fun together! happy springtime of blooming and rebirthing! it’s an egggggscellent time of year, isn’t it?

and they made for a wonderful breakfast –

especially when all dolled up like chicks paired with lemonade scones… thanks to just jenn’s recipe blog.