when you decorate eggs, do you just boil them? or blow them out? or something else?
i tried the blow-out method by poking two holes and, well, blowing the raw egg out. and i’m pretty sure it might lead to an aneurysm. it just felt so, so wrong. but i persevered and decorated (this one with little parchment daisies) but then it also led to this…
so i think i’ll leave that technique to the professionals.
boiling* them is fine, but if we’ll be eating them, i don’t want to use glue and such on them. and i don’t want to just toss them after boiling and decorating them with non-edible materials. i’ve decorated a few fake eggs that i got at the craft store (i’ll share those next time). but i’m curious…
what do you do?
* i recently learned that if you dunk the eggs in cold water after hard-boiling them, it keeps the yolk from getting discoloured. i tried it and it works. any other tips? please share in the comments!
We tried blowing out eggs a couple times when I was a kid and it never worked for us. If you check out Craft and/or Craft Gossip I think both of those blogs have been posting to some natural dying tutorials. Some of them I’ve seen this week even used herbs as a resist for the dying. There were some good samples I saw go past in my RSS reader. I never checked any of the tutorials though so can’t speak to their quality. You might check Whip-Up too I think…
Here are a couple posts on natural dyeing I came across today:
http://blissfullydomestic.com/2009/coloring-easter-eggs-naturally
http://rhythmofthehome.com/archives/spring-2010/coloring-eggs-naturally/
HTH!
thanks for the links kristi. i LOVE the leaf imprints in that second link. great idea, maybe next year :)
back in the day…I too blew out eggs…whew that took time and pressure LOL
imagine your blown out egg…draw an oval of white craft glue…let it dry…peck a little hole in the middle of the glued portion and cut just inside the glued circle with small scissors…now the egg is ready for a little scene inside…maybe a button or such as a platform to hold it steady when completed…hope that was a good enough explanation…your broken daisy egg made me think of that…
I will not get to play with eggs this Easter as we’ll be traveling…Spring is such a fun time of year!
oxo
How bad is it that I’ve never actually dyed eggs with my daughters?! I feel a bit Grinchy, but it just seems like a waste of good eggs to me so I was looking for alternatives and am considering making these at some point. Maybe we’ll work on them on Friday :) http://www.notmartha.org/tomake/papiermacheeastereggs/
notmartha was one of the first craft blogs i ever read. her diy magnets were my first project of hers that i tried. the polka dotted eggs are cool. and i’m grinchy about plenty of things, don’t feel bad about this one. thanks for sharing!
Well I am not much help on this one as we boil eggs to eat at the Seder. The most we do is scorch one on the stovetop for the Seder plate and throw that one away.
Once when I decorated as a kid, I remember them being boiled first. I don’t think we knew so much about dyes or anything to be worried about eating them later then.
It might be a fun way to check out natural dyes. Enjoy. Happy holidays. :)
thanks dvora! enjoy your weekend.
Natural dyes are a fun way to experiment with your kids…onion skins (brown and red) are cool. You can see if they can guess what color it will turn the eggs. As far as blowing them ( I have had more than one dizzy spell back in the day!) goes, I would try making a smaller hole at the top, and a bigger hole at the bottom. Then you can decoupage over the bigger hole, and it will disappear! I love Patty’s suggestion of doing a dye-orama (sorry- couldn’t resist!) with your egg- that would be sweet! Especially with a little pipe cleaner chick inside….wish I had time to experiment with that one! Have fun with it, and Happy Easter!
so many ideas, so little time eh? :) thanks cessie, i think i’ll stick to the onion skin dyeing too. i just love the look of it.
i think it looks cool:) i’ve never blown any eggs out…we always boiled them and used the Paas coloring kits…but apparently that was bad for us to do and then eat?? i think my siblings and i have survived the dye ok:)
hi heather, thanks! yeah, it’s a miracle the atrocities we survived ;) it’s not the food colouring i’m worried about so much as the decoupage glue and such.
Hullo Ana, I am not all that clear on the whole blowing egg thing at all, however, do you boil them in water and vinegar? Why I have vinegar in my head, I have no idea at all. I do actually like your little egg although cracked you know. It’s rather sweet and in my head I have an image of a cute little chick in just those daisy colours ‘peeping’ every so quietly for it’s mumma. Have fun with your eggs, I would love to see what you do and how they work out. I also love your sketches from Sunday, gosh they are so lovely. If I don’t get back on here, have a wonderful Easter at your place.
when i dye them, i add vinegar to the boiling water, yes. i think as sheri suggested below, i made too small a hole. i also got a good tip by email, saying i should try placing a needle into the hole and stirring the yolk around and breaking the membrane before trying to blow. this is getting complicated ;)
thanks for the comment on my sketching. you know i have a lot of fun with those.
happy weekend to you & yours!
I love to do blown out eggs. How do I do them? Gently.
After they are decorated I thread a string through from top (the smaller hole) to bottom (the slightly larger hole), tie a knot that will pass through the bottom but not the top, and hang them in a sunny window.
The problem you’re having, Ana, is likely because you’re using store-bought eggs. Those poor chickies are undernourished so their shells are thin and more fragile. Try to find a small organic farm that sells eggs and purchase a dozen. Duck eggs would be even better. :)
i’ve never paid much attention to shell thickness before corey. that makes a lot of sense. how do you poke the hole?
I was just thinking last night I should have shared my method. I use a thumb tack first, to poke the holes, or a safety pin. Then I take a straightened paperclip, stick it through the bottom hole and into the yoke, and scramble it all up. THEN I blow it out.
p.s. I really like the idea of a small ring of glue to reinforce the hole before you poke it. Someone up there mentioned doing that for a shadow egg but I wonder if it would work for the bottom hole on a blown egg. :) I bet it would.
My bro and I always colored ours with crayons and then dipped them in dye. One year we colored a Humpty Dumpty family of six, made a punk teen with a nose piercing, prime-n-proper parents, a shaggy haired son, and everything, we couldn’t stop laughing at our lil egg family. Never tried blowing out an egg…too fragile an undertaking for me, I’d just end up swearing and Easters not meant for that! lol
fun times! ( and i hope you got a picture of that lil egg family)
It’s not really that hard to blow eggs. Perhaps you were challenging yourself with too-small holes? I never did this much until the kids were big enough to blow their own eggs. That’s the best solution. We have several egg cartons of old eggs they decorated over the years. They’re fun to look at at Easter.
i think you’re right sheri, about the hole being too small. but when i tried to make a larger hole, it cracked down the side. i need more practice i think. how would you poke the hole through?
Very carefully : )
I agree with needing to poke a larger hole on the bottom end. I make mine with a screw so I can gently twist it into the egg, gradually making the hole larger.
Another tip that REALLY helps is to break up the egg yolk before blowing it. I stick a small skewer up into the egg and swish it around to get everything all loosened up. That makes the insides come out in smaller bits instead of one big clump. Does that make sense?
thanks anna! totally makes sense.
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I’m not going to be much help – I’ve always had someone blow my eggs for me.