Sharpies and Blown Eggs

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For Art Group the Friday before Easter we drew on blown eggs with sharpies. It was a lovely project, and worked for everyone 3 year olds to moms. I was inspired by Gingerbread Snowflakes Faux Pysanky.

The very first thing we did was blow eggs, let them dry, then cover the inside with Mod Podge, which we learned about from Aunt Peaches: How to Make Hollow Eggs Last Ten Years. We didn’t cover the outside with Mod Podge until after drawing on them. I found if we did it at the beginning the Mod Podge would get on the sharpies and clog them up, maybe I was just imagining it, but it seemed to work better if we left the outer Mod Podge coating until the end.

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The eggs were all dry and waiting when all the girls came over to draw. We had scads of eggs, everyone helped to blow them, and 33 colorful sharpies. We even had 33 colorful sharpies when we cleaned up at the end, bonus! I gave each of them a plate to set their egg on when they weren’t holding it, to keep them from rolling off the table. And when you have this many absent minded girls reaching for sharpies, that is going to happen. It did anyway, a few times, luckily the inner coating of Mod Podge was enough to protect against a short fall onto concrete. We did have one dramatic egg shatter, when Alara squeezed a little too tightly. Everyone else learned from her tears! And none of the 3-4 year olds broke their eggs, thank you Mod Podge and Aunt Peaches!

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After drawing on the eggs we strung them up. To make the loops and we used pearl cotton (I think), beads and florists wire.

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Double over the pearl cotton and knot it, string on a bead, string on your egg, string on another bead, and then you can unfold the florists wire and pull it out, leaving your loop out the top of the egg. If your hole in the top of the egg is especially small, stringing the egg on can be tricky. I found that if I held the egg right up to my eye I could see to guide the florist wire out of even tiny holes. But it took practice and patience.

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Tie one more knot, and you have a hanging ornament.

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Then, lower string, beads and all, we coated the outside of the eggs with watered down Mod Podge. If you were being fancy you might rest the eggs on skewers to do the outer coat before stringing it, so as to not get drippy Mod Podge all over your lower bead and string, but the Mod Podge on the beads didn’t bother me, it just gave them a frosted look to match the egg. And the work flow for the kids was much simpler, their project just needed to dry at the end, and not in the middle.

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So now I’m sick of blowing eggs, but also so glad that everyone got into the project. And it was a good chance to talk about symmetry and how repeated patterns can make things attractive.

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Blowing eggs isn’t my favourite part of Easter activities ^^ but it looks like it was really worth it 🙂
I like the doll in the middle of the table, just hope she didn’t get painted too!

Luckily we were using Sharpies not paint that week, so I think the doll escaped unscathed. 🙂

The mod podge tip is a great one! I made a blown-out egg once when I was 7 or 8 years old, but it didn’t last very long. I think we may try this next year, especially since my son was very disappointed that he couldn’t keep any of the hard-boiled eggs he decorated this year.

Yes, I always want to keep everything. It always seems so sad to eat decorated eggs. I still haven’t packed the blown eggs though, I’m worried it might be tricky with the beads on the top and bottom, I feel they might crack the shell if any pressure is put on them. I was thinking perhaps an egg carton with holes in the bottom and top, packed inside of another egg carton top and bottom… I abhor packing christmas ornaments too.

Thank you so much for sharing the link to my post! But thank you even bigger for the link to Aunt Peaches post for hardening blown out eggs! I treat mine as if they were glass ornaments so no breakage yet!! But it would be nice not to have to worry so much!!!

Will definitely try it next year.

The kids eggs turned out so pretty. And the best part is that they will be able to handle and enjoy them!

Thank you!

Thanks for inspiring us! Last year when we made eggs, well, I don’t have any left, but I can’t exactly remember what happened to them… hmm. I know some of them broke though! This year they survived an awful lot of trauma!

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