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An Easter Of Many Colours

Decorating eggs, painting them vibrant colours and finding unique patterns is a favourite part of the Easter holidays. As well as a way to celebrate Easter, engage with your family and have some fun, decorating eggs is also a fantastic way to add some beautiful touches to your home decor and show off your personality.

I’m dedicating this blog to some fun and wowing egg decorating tips to help inspire you to get creative this Easter.

How much you do and what you do will depend on the finished look you are aiming for. You can make an incredible arrangement just with food dye, or go all out with craft pieces and glitter.

Look at each egg as a blank canvas. Feel free to get as creative as you like and try your hand at dying and decorating in rainbows of colour, go for natural simplicity or striking details, and embellish with anything from glitter to stencils to découpage to lace.

There’s a technique and application for every age group and skill level.

Some tools you might like to choose from:
  • Eggs (obviously). You might like to blow them out so they are hollow, giving you a lasting decoration, or boil and decorate to eat later on as a healthy snack, part of a salad or a tasty egg sandwich.
  • Hens eggs are the easiest to find but if you are feeling super creative you can also look for duck eggs (slightly larger), quail eggs, petite and delicate, ostrich and emu (giant and the dark colours can make for some very unique looks)
  • Paint
  • Food dye
  • Ribbon
  • Lace
  • Cotton buds (if you like dot painting)
  • Stickers
  • Glitter
  • Glitter glue pens
  • Confetti
  • Craft embellishments (these shiny packs are cheap and come in all sorts of colours from a variety or craft store, leaves, flowers, hearts etc)
  • Buttons

How to blow out your eggs to keep them longer

Hard-boiled eggs will only last a week or so. You can blow out the egg inside and keep the shell for much longer. They can even become decorations in your home all year round.

Before you begin it’s best to cover the area you are working with newspaper or protective cover (maybe work outside if you have younger kids. This can be a messy activity and the egg can be difficult to budge after it has dried.

Using a pin or needle, poke a hole in the top and bottom of the egg. You can use the needle to work the hole a little to make it larger at one end – this will help blow the egg out easily.

You can also stir the eggs up inside using a BBQ skewer or a large paperclip that has been opened out straight. Giving it a good stir will help break it up.

You can think of ways to cover the holes with decorations, or a small circle of paper.

This is a great task to give to kids. Hold the egg over a clean bowl with the larger hole pointing down and blow hard into the top hole. This will cause the contents to spill into the bowl. Keep blowing until there is nothing left inside.

All those eggs are great for omelettes, scrambled eggs on toast or a yummy quiche or frittata.

Don’t wash the eggs, but you can wipe them over with a damp cloth if you need to, just let them dry before you decorate.

If you don’t like the idea of blowing out the eggs yourself (or if you become too light-headed) you can also use a rubber ear syringe (or snot extractor as I know it).

How to boil your eggs for beautiful snacks

Because you want a smooth surface to decorate, you want to avoid cracks in the shell. To boil eggs without cracking:

Bring them to room temperature

You want them to be at room temperature before you put them in water to try to close the gap between the egg temperature and the hot water that will soon be surrounding them. To speed things up you can rest them in hot tap water to help warm them – just for a few minutes.

Use older eggs

Really fresh eggs are not the best for boiling. Boil the older eggs you have first.

Protect them from knocks

Eggs can crack if they knock against each other or the bottom of the saucepan. Make sure you only boil one layer of eggs at a time and they have enough space that they are not crowded. You can also put a folded cheesecloth under the eggs to protect them from the hard saucepan base.

Use cold tap water

Make sure you cook your eggs slowly by starting in room temperature water and having the stove set for low to medium heat and bringing the eggs to a boil gradually.

Get Salty

Add half a teaspoon of salt to the water. Salt helps the egg inside firm up faster. It can also help prevent breaks or reduce break damage.

Stop when it boils

You don’t want to over boil your eggs. As soon as the water reaches a full boil, turn off the heat and leave the eggs to sit in the hot water with the saucepan lid covering the pot – they will still be hard-boiled- they will keep cooking as they rest. 9-12 minutes is a good time for hard-boiled eggs which is best for decorating as you won’t be eating them immediately and you want them firm and strong.

Remove the eggs after 9-12 minutes and rinse under cool tap water.

Release air

There are air pockets inside eggs and this may cause some to crack, however, these cooking methods will reduce it to a minimum. If you are worried about trapped air causing broken eggs you can pierce the eggshell with a thumbtack or pin at the larger end to help the gas release but it can cause the eggs to become wet, so only use it as a last resort if nothing else is working.

Want to go Eco?

Use your own eggs. If you are lucky enough to have your own hens, this is a great way to make use of the whole egg.

There are plenty of foods and items you can use that have natural dyes:
  • Red cabbage (purple colour)
  • Onion skins
  • Coffee
  • Beetroot
  • Turmeric

Use these dyes cold and have fun dipping naturally.

How to decorate your egg

Colour

To get bold and bright colours take a heatproof bowl and add 1 cup hot water, 20 drops of food dye and 1 teaspoon of vinegar.

You want the egg to be completely covered by the coloured water.

Use tongs to dip the eggs in and out. The longer it soaks, the deeper the colour will appear.

Banded colours

Dip the egg in one colour, submerging the egg completely, then dip just the bottom of the egg in a second colour, and just the top in a third. If you want clean bands of colour you’ll need to wait for each dip to dry (see drying tips below) before going again, but the colours running into each other can also be a nice effect too.

You can use this multi-dip technique to make a medley of colours or shades of one colour all over your egg.

Mask

Before you dye, you can apply a mask to your eggs that will stop or slow the colour absorption to that part of the egg. You can show either anter colour underneath or the natural colour of the egg by fastening down before you add dye (or final dye layer) to reveal a pattern or texture underneath when you remove the mask. This technique can look striking when it is perfected but you might also see some bleeding of colour into the mask zones too. Have enough eggs to do some practice and perfect your technique.

Things you can use as a mask:
  • Rubber bands (you can put multiple layers of bands and remove some of them with each dye dip, it can be the same colour to get a shaded effect or different colours)
  • Lace
  • Ribbon
  • Masking tape
  • Leaves
  • Stickers
  • Wax crayons/oil pastels – especially the white ones- where you draw will repel the dye

See what you can do and how creative you can get. Remove the mask after the dye has dried to see the pattern that is left behind.

Stickers

Once your egg is coloured you can leave it as is or continue adorning it. Here are plenty of stickers, sparkles, flowers, paper cutouts and decorations you can use to create eggs that show your personality or reflect on the style of your home. The classic gold star stickers can go a long way!

Sparkle

Want to personalise your eggs with a monogram feature? To do this wait until your egg is completely dry (see drying tips below). YOu can use a glitter pen to write your chosen letter or you can use PVA glue and dust the egg with fine sand or glitter to get the monogram to stand out.

You can also coat part or even the whole egg in a soft glitter sheen.

How to dry your egg

You want to place your eggs to dry so that it won’t ruin the even colour effect. Some people are happy just to use a metal drying rack (like for cookies), however, I find you can get a blemish from the wire bands.

I’m a big believer in using whatever you have around your home.

Here are some things you can choose from to make an egg drying rack out of items you might already have:
  • Drink bottle caps – upside down they make a little cup for the egg to rest
  • Toilet roll cylinders (you can cut these into three)
  • Cling wrap or foil cylinders (you can cut these into 4-6 pieces)
  • Egg carton turned upside down- the pockets on the underside are shallow and easy to manoeuvre your eggs into.
  • Shot glasses are another good size to act as mini cups to dry your eggs.

You will need to wait at least 15 minutes for the egg to dry.