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!

we’re honored to be a part of this inspiring free spring crafts ebook put out by no time for flashcards and life your way.

click here to download it, and enjoy some springtime fun! including our nesting orbs and other creative projects you can do in the sunshine with your favorite little friends.

have an artsy spring!

yes, i’ve posted this one before… and it’s because we’ve just realized that this is becoming one of our springtime rituals in our house. sure dying easter eggs is fun, but watercoloring wooden ones leaves a lasting impression.

a package was delivered to us last week from casey’s wood products. when i opened it and N saw a bunch of wooden eggs of all sizes, she started jumping up and down… “we’re painting wooden eggs again!?!? yay!!!”

because we were having a few families over for dinner, N wanted me to woodburn the names (blurred out below) of the kids onto a few of the eggs (and one for her, of course) with my trusty woodburning tool.

then she was totally absorbed in watercoloring the eggs with colors that remind her of those people.

after polishing the eggs with our homemade wood creme, we presented them in a nest to the kids at the dinner. the artiste was very proud.

i think we’ll do this every year… as gifts, and as decor for our own nature tables and baskets. what springtime rituals do you have in your home?

sharing the joy

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!

yesterday i made egg salad with all of our hardboiled easter eggs, and as i was peeling these colorful little orbs, i thought that the pretty shells must have yet another life in them. then it hit me – mosaics.

i have always adored making mosaics. i made a huuuge one in grad school from tiles i painted, fired, cut, and grouted myself… mixed with mirrors and photos under glass. whew! this was going to be quite a different feat – so much tinier, so much easier, right? so i saved the shells.

then i organized them by color while N napped – way satisfying for this ROY G BIV nerd!

i decided that the colors would really pop on a black background. i took the liberty of drawing butterfly and dragonfly shapes on the papers before N woke up that we could fill in together later. your kids can draw their own shapes, or no shapes at all. the eggshells are so pretty in their own right that they don’t need a design, but i thought the colors and broken shapes lent themselves well to winged creatures.

when N was awake, we got out the trusty elmer’s glue and tried the mosaic. um, fail. okay… if you have older kids (like kids who have the dexterity to peel the tiniest, most delicate stickers off of sticker paper with half-dried glue on their hands and not get frustrated, that’s the age we’re going for. fyi: even i am barely mature enough to tolerate this.)

fill the design with glue, and start putting down the tiny shell bits. try not to scream. i totally lost N within about two minutes of this, though she was my colorist and told me which colors to make the insects’ body parts.

then she ran around a lot and drew on her magnadoodle, eventually revisiting to check on how i was doing.

she helped me to spread the remaining eggshells in our flowerbed when we were all finished.

all in all, i feel like this would be a great meditative exercise in patience for adults and older children, but hardly for toddlers. i thought i’d include it here, for those individuals. enjoy every little bit and piece!

where would my home be without ikea ribba frames?

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.

after making so many wooden easter and springtime friends, N really wanted to make more out of “clay.” since we don’t have a kiln over here, i busted out the model magic, and she got down to business.

N made lots of eggs and a caterpillar. i also helped her make the 2 spring chickies you see above, and a bunny.

it took two days for the model magic eggs to dry (they’re dense, even though they’re lightweight.) when they were ready, we painted them with acrylics. we first had a lesson in what-happens-to-each-color-of-the-rainbow-when-mixed-with-white-paint? PASTELS FOR SPRING!

we had a little painting party…

we probably got more paint on our hands than the figures and eggs, but it was all good clean fun.

we loved decorating our home with our new little spring sculptures…