Eggstravaganza!!!

 

Sorry for the cheezy post title - I couldn't seem to help myself!  Oh, how I adore Easter (because of the glorious celebration that it is) and all the lovely rebirth-themed, springtime traditional decorations that come with the season.  I've always enjoyed decorating Easter eggs and making bunnies and having egg hunts and all that, and now I'll share a few little decorating tidbits and ideas with you!

 

For this arrangement, I used a white cake plate, placed a small white, inverted bowl in the center, and put this darling little lambkins plate on top of the bowl.

 

I adore this little plate set, which I excitedly snatched up at a little thrift shop (I never saw so many little vintage Buddha statues in my life!) in Japan when we were visiting Steve's parents in Hokkaido last year.  I love these plates, I have a couple hanging up on my wall above the kitchen sink, and now these are gracing my dining room table centerpiece.  I'm in love with the increasingly popular blue-and-white color theme (it's so clean and fresh), so I decided to keep it classically simple for this arrangement.

 

I had such a fantastic time decorating these eggs the other night, when all the kiddos were sleeping soundly and I had a couple of hours of blissful uninterrupted peace.  My kids are extremely rambunctious and LOUD, bless their little hearts (and high-decibal voices), so when they're all in bed it's my rejuvenation time.

 

So I should probably be telling you how I achieved some of these egg designs, eh?  Unfortunately I didn't think to take pics of the steps along the way, so I'll just have to describe those to you.

1) First, if you want to keep these eggs for more than a few weeks, you'll need to blow the insides out.  Take a push pin and make little holes on either ends of the egg.  I usually make the initial tiny hole, then 2 other holes nearby the first one and start chipping away at the egg shell in between all 3 holes until there is one larger hole.  It doesn't have to be any larger than 1/8" in diameter.  Take a long needle and pierce the yolk, then shake the egg a little bit so it breaks the yolk up.

2) Using a baby nose-sucking syringe thingy (how's that for technical terms?  I think it's really called an aspirator, not sure though) AKA BoogerSnatcher, place the tip of the BoogerSnatcher over one of the holes and squeeze GENTLY (too much pressure will burst the egg open, as it did to 8!! of my 24 eggs.  What's up with chickens and their thin-shelled eggs these days?!) to expel the egg innards.  You may want to place the tip of the BS at a slight angle so as not to force too much air inside the egg at once.  Or make a bigger hole at the bottom of your egg, which I probably should have done after the first few busted eggs.  HINT:  DO NOT LEAVE THE BS OVER THE HOLE AS YOU RELEASE PRESSURE ON THE BULB OF THE UNIT.  Such an action will result in egg guts being sucked inside the bulb of the BS, creating an environment for bacterial growth that makes me cringe to think about (or smell in a day or two!).

You could also use your mouth and a good set of lungs to expel the egg guts if you don't happen to own a BS, but if you're doing more than a few eggs at a time I would have to warn you that extreme headache/dizziness symptoms might complicate things (been there, done that...my mom and I used to do all our eggs using the mouth/lungs method, and I sure dreaded it!  The price one pays for art, I suppose...unless, of course, you are in possession of the highly practical and versatile BoogerSnatcher).

3) When all egg innards are expelled from the shell, rinse off and place the egg upright so any excess moisture can drain.  Let eggs dry completely.

 

If you want to have the image of a plant on your egg, here's how (and by the way, this technique is not my idea; it's widely available in most crafty magazines around Easter time pretty much every year.  I'm sure there's a tut for it on Martha Stewart.):

1) Using a little brush (I used my kid's watercolor paint set brush), brush some egg white onto the back of the leaf and carefully place it on the egg, pressing gently until the leaf sticks to the egg.  Try not to smear any excess egg white around, as it could repel some of the dye later on.

2) I used fresh cilantro leaves and wilted green onion stems (the fresh, fleshy stems wouldn't work because they were too stiff to stick to the egg) that I slit open lengthwise and wrapped around the egg because it was cold and rainy and dark outside and I didn't want to go on an outdoor plant scavenger hunt at 10:00 at night.

The white band you see around this egg was achieved with a green onion stem.

The herringbone pattern was not; I'll explain how I did that in a minute.

3) Take an old pair of old hose or stockings and cut into 4 to 6 inch tubes.  Carefully place your plant-ed egg into the middle of the tube and draw up both raw ends of the tube.  Secure the ends with string, rubber bands, twisty ties, etc.

4) Prepare your egg dye per instructions on the box, OR you can make your own by mixing 2 Tbls vinegar, several drops of liquid food coloring, and 1/2 cup water into little cups.

5) Place your egg into dye, wait until desired color appears, remove from hose, carefully peel off plant, gently blot, and you're done!

For the HERRINGBONE TEXTURE, instead of nylon hose I took a pair of herringbone-textured trouser socks and cut into tubes.  I turned them inside-out so the textured side faced inward, then placed the egg inside and wrapped as described above.  I really had to dunk these eggs well because this particular fabric was rather water-repellant and didn't allow much dye to reach the egg, so that's something to watch for if you try this.  After soaking the egg for several minutes, I lifted it out and let it rest on the cardboard egg carton for AT LEAST half an hour while it was still in its sock cocoon.  This will ensure that the sock texture has a chance to do its thing uninterrupted.  Then just unwrap and blot dry as usual.

Other textures were achieved using little round garage sale stickers, the donut shaped circles were stickers to reinforce paper holes for use in binders, and this egg

 

was wrapped in printer-label stickers cut in half lengthwise and gently molded to fit the shape of the egg.  I love the areas where the dye seeped in underneath the stickers - it creates such a lovely and interesting texture.

If you do use stickers, I would advise that you remove them a minute or two after the egg comes out of the dye.  They're much easier to remove when they're still saturated with fluid.  You don't want to handle the egg too much immediately after the dye bath because you might mess it up, but don't wait too long (I speak from experience) or you'll be scraping sticker glue off for longer than it took to prepare the egg!

 

This egg is one of several I did many years ago.  I had wrapped large rubber bands all over the place before dunking it into the dye.

Here are more eggs from years ago...

 

So, when my kids awoke to all the eggciting (sorry, I promise I'll stop with the puns) new inventory on Saturday morning, of course they wanted to join in on the fun.  Hyrum has been asking me for weeks now when he got to decorate eggs, he loves doing it so much.  Last year he was up to his wrists in dye (no kidding - I'll have to dig out that picture of Hyrum proudly displaying his muddy egg with equally muddy hands - it's priceless) so this year I was very impressed that he was able to do it without any fist baths.

Here is Mr. Facemaker preparing one of his masterpieces for a dunk.

It takes a lot of concentration, you know, to get those stickers "just so" on that egg!

 


  

Here's Eliza, in the smock that Grandma made for her when Eliza was about 2 years old.  It's getting a little snug there, honey!  I used to have to roll up the sleeves, and now they're at her elbows.

The kids had a great time decorating their own eggs.  Eliza dedicated this one to Hyrum and Hazel.

 Sweet little Hazel wanted to join in the fun too.  She kept climbing on top of the table and almost tipped the cups full of dye over more than once.  Just look at that mischevious grin!

 

Here she is before she pulled out her little "tree", as we call it.  Hazel can't stand to have anything in her hair, but her hair is always in her eyes and it's got to drive her nuts.  I know it drives ME crazy to see her hair in her eyes all the time!  I don't want to cut her hair because it grows forward from the back of her head, so if I started cutting bangs she'd end up with a mullet.  Not the look I'm going for. 

So, until it grows out a little more we'll have to suffice with the tree vs. no tree look. 

 

....And now, for the pastel explosion of Easter Bunny stuff!

 

Over the years I've collected a lot of little Easter decorations that I usually display throughout the house.  With Hazel being the age that she is and considering her innate desire to climb on, pull off, rip up, and unwrap everything in her grasp, this year I put all the pretties on one side table.  I then used that foamy double sided sticky tape on the corners and edges of the tabletop to hold the tablecloth in place.  I kept having these visions of Hazel walking up to the cloth and yanking on it, thus sending all the sparkly doo-dahs crashing to the floor in a million little pieces, so this will hopefully prevent that scenario.

So far, Hazel hasn't shown a whole lot of interest in the Easter things (knock on wood) so we might escape with little or no damage this year!

 

My two older kids, on the other hand, got so excited when they saw these things on the table - they love to go over and look at all the decorations.  When I was growing up my mom had made an elaborate Easter scene, with felt-covered bunnies, hand-blown eggs covered carefully in dainty green and yellow polka dot fabric and trimmed with white ric rac, a little white tree to hang the eggs from, etc.  I was fascinated with that as a child, and I loved to stand there gazing at all the little details. 

 

I must admit, however, that most of the things on this table are store-bought.  With the exception of the 3 hand-painted plates, these are all things I have found at places like Tuesday Morning, HomeGoods, Ross, etc.  I suppose I could make a ceramic bunny of my own, for example, but why spend the time doing that when I can buy one for such a reasonable price at the store? :-)

 

Now, please don't get me wrong - I love making things by hand and usually prefer to go the handmade route; however, there are only so many hours in the day and it becomes a matter of prioritizing my time and energy to those projects which are most exciting and/or urgent for me, in the few hours each day that I have to work on such things.  I think I painted this plate 2 Easters ago...the colors are off and the focus is poor (oops) but I think you can get the basic idea.

I think this little trio of bunnies is so sweet, don't you?  The mama bunny got broken during the move, so they're a little sad about that (as am I) but I know they'll pull through.

 

 

I love this carved egg.  It reminds me of Jim Shore's little Christmas statuettes, with the quilted influence and carved appearance.

 

  

To make an Easter tree, simply go outside and clip a few branches from a deciduous tree that have relatively strong, upward-pointing branches.  Make sure they look good with the size of vase/flower pot/jar, etc, trim them as necessary to get the height you want and make sure the proportions are attractive. 

Twist a large rubber band around the bottoms of the braches to secure them together.

Spray paint them white, don't worry about the paint dripping if you get the nozzle too close because you don't have a large surface to worry about a drip showing up on.  Be sure to paint from all sides, plus from the bottom facing up and from the top facing down.  It'll take a lot of paint to get every little branch covered, I think I used a can and a half for this project.

I also tried spraying adhesive onto the white branches and sprinkling with clear glitter, which I wouldn't recommend because it doesn't show up that much and I wasted a whole container of glitter.  It all stuck to the spray adhesive which had collected on my scrap piece of cardboard that I had placed beneath the tree branches.

 

You have a few choices for how to get the branches to stay put in your container.  I placed a piece of green floral foam in the bottom of mine, then added some rocks for weight so my giant tree wouldn't get top heavy, then when it was still wobbly I added some crumpled newspaper to keep the trunk stable inside the container. 

You could also use Plaster of Paris and pour it into your container, stick the branches in and wait for it to harden.  Then you could cover the top with some Easter grass to hide the P of P.  If I were going that route, I would use a flowerpot and line it with plastic wrap before pouring in the P of P.  This way, you can slip the hardened base out of the pot and, if necessary for storage reasons, discard the branch stuck in the P of P and save the pot for next year. 

 

I adore egg cups, aren't they cute? 

 

Those glittery, sparkly eggs make me smile too.

 

My kids keep touching the sparkly bead eggs and asking if they're glass.  I'm sure they're not, but they sure look like it!

 

They just glow in the sunlight.

Happy Easter in advance, I have more Eastery things to post later on, but first I need to concentrate on St. Patrick's Day tomorrow!  We're going to have an ALL GREEN meal tomorrow, but shhh! don't tell the kids!  It's going to be a surprise.  Can't wait to see their expressions when they see the green mashed potatoes, green-dyed chicken, and all the green fruits and veggies.  Fun, fun!  I haven't figured out dessert yet, though...and since Eliza dislikes jello I may have to do green-colored lemon bars or a white cake mix with green food coloring (or pistachio pudding mix) in it.

Have a great day, and don't get pinched tomorrow!

Comments

[Jane]

Hi Shelley!
Such an adorable post! I love your blue dyed Easter eggs - may even try it myself! Thanks for the tutorial.
Happy Easter!!

[אמבטיות]

Amazing post shared by you here. I love it. I like your smart and creative idea. I never see such beautiful work on eggs before. It's really inspirational.

[מרזבים]

I want to apply color on this bright, I worry about the color leaking and get the misting nozzle too near because you don't have a huge exterior to fear about a trickle displaying up on.