12 Creative ways to decorate your Easter Eggs
12 Creative ways to add color to your Easter eggs.
The eggs are in a large pot cooking away. Every year I buy 24 eggs, and every year a couple inevitably crack open the minute they hit the hot water. This time I set them out for a couple of hours so that they'd be room temperature, hoping that would help. A couple still managed to crack, somehow. No worries, that never stops us. We'll color them anyhow. My kids are traditionalists. Every year they insist I buy those inexpensive kits, you know the kind with the plastic cups and the little tablets of dye that, when placed in a water and vinegar solution, explode with color. When they were younger, watching the water magically turn to bright shades of gold, red, pink, blue, green and purple was half the fun. Over the years the prices of these kits have gone up, and gone are the plastic little cups. We instead use our own tea cups and glasses - which is in itself much better for watching the water turn colors and in creating a perfectly colored egg. Over the years, we've wrapped our eggs in string, rubber bands, tape and placed countless (much to my chagrin) stickers onto the shells. We've written secret messages in white crayon, only to be exposed when the egg has been colored. We've used the same crayons to create patterns and shapes on our eggs. We've tried tye-dying and all sorts of other - not always successful - ideas. We've colored white eggs and brown eggs and we always prefer the white ones.
I've curated a few ideas that we may or may not ultimately use. We'll cover up the dining room table with old stained and splattered upon table cloths and create our colors. There'll be messes and spills and thrills and when all the eggs are done we'll want to color more. I may break out the brown eggs - I usually do. Or we may simply call it a day and enjoy the beauty we've created. But we'll always say "We should do this again! Why do we only color eggs on Easter?" And I'll tell the children that we can do this any time they want, but for some reason we don't. I'm sure this year, after all our eggs and the table-cloth and the paper towels have all been colored, they'll say "We should do this again!" and I am sure I will tell them "We can do this anytime you want to." Because, really, there's no reason why we can't.
All it takes is a Sharpie - These black and white eggs may not be traditional in the pastel color sense, but they've got a creative, festive edge. A perfect project with teenagers or grown children. (Add drops of rubbing alcohol onto the eggs to give the Sharpie a watercolor-like effect.) Colored Sharpies, of course, make wonderful creations as well.
Customize your eggs with personalized or inspirational messages. Place an egg with a personalized message, placed at every place setting, or have eggs with fortune like messages in a basket in the middle of the table and ask everyone to select one - a twist on the traditional fortune cookie, as a touch of entertainment.
We really like the clean and simple look of the Sharpie on the egg. Slightly imperfect and simple shapes and patters drawn on to plain white eggs add a modern touch to any table. Image via Obviously Sweet.
Blue and white never fades from style, especially at the Easter table. These eggs look to be done in a combination of techniques that include dyeing and decoupage. I love the mixture of patterns, colors and mediums of the eggs in the bowl as they maintain a uniform look. (I found the image on pinterest and could not locate the original source using Tineye or Google's reverse image search.)
The folks at Better Homes and Gardens show you how you can have a colorful Easter table naturally. The traditionalist in me still does love beautiful bright and pale pastel eggs.
Colorblocking eggs is fun and beautiful, but harder for smaller hands without the help of an older sibling or parent. See Jane Blog shows you how to colorblock and rubber-band your eggs.
I love Spoon Fork Bacon, and visit often for recipes and inspiration. I love these watercolor eggs she's created as well. Again we see the use of a few simple colors so that a simple color theme into play. Using a special dye found here, she is able to achieve this wonderful effect. This project has the potential to be messy and may be best for older children, unless you've got a space that can handle a potential food coloring mess!
This idea from Unsophisticook, of using rubber cement to create a contrast, in my opinion, is positively brilliant, and I will be giving this a try when we paint our eggs later today. For instructions visit her website.
Only Deco Love uses whipped cream to make these marbleized eggs. It looks simple enough and not so messy that little children will most likely delight in this project - and the fact that whipped cream is both sugary and edible makes this particularly sweet project. (Pun intended!) Head on over to her site for directions.
Of course, not as tasty, but shaving cream will also do! Katie's Crochet Goodies gives you the low-down.
These beautiful eggs were created by decoupaging paper napkins onto hard boiled eggs. Using egg whites as a glue makes this a project that even the littlest set can enjoy. While these are seemingly perfect, done with skill and precision, the imperfection crafted by small hands is always beautiful, and I believe that there's beauty and perfection in imperfection. Most likely we've all got some old decorative napkins and eggs lying around. Hop on over to La Receta de la Felicidad for a step by step how to.
For the hard core DYIers Urban Comfort shows you how to create beautifully colored eggs using RIT dye. As seen in very first image.