Another nice way to decorate with Easter eggs

I have been trying out all sorts of ways to decorate eggs.  I have explained some of my experiments in my post today as the Guest Designer on Everyday Cricut - you can click on this LINK to go directly to that post.   There are lots of great prizes this week so you'll want to enter on the Everyday Cricut blog for a chance to win.

Here is one of the variations I tried using just vinyl on an emptied egg.  If you use empty eggs you can save them from year to year and display your creations.  I have collected eggs for years - I started when we lived in Germany.  If you would like to see some of the eggs in my collection, you can look at THIS POST and THIS POST from last year.

You may be wondering about the best method to empty your eggs.  When I was growing up, we would poke at the ends of the egg with a needle to create a small hole and then put our mouths on one end and blow the contents out the other end,  It was messy and rather unsanitary!

When we lived in Germany, our younger son went to the German Kindergarten in our town.  Every so often they would have "Eltern Abend" (Parent's Evening) and this often involved a craft project.  After struggling with the translation of one of the newsletters my son brought home, I figured out that I was to bring emptied eggs to one of these events.  I was amazed to see the other parents show up with eggs that had tiny perfect holes on only one end.

This photo shows you the "secret weapon" for neatly emptying eggs.  The green handled item is a small drill for the end of the egg.  Once the hole is drilled, you insert the metal needle which is placed on the yellow bellows.  The needle breaks up the yolk and, by squeezing the the bellows, you pump air into the egg and the contents are forced out through the tiny hole.  When the contents are emptied, you fill the bellows with water and rinse the egg to remove any residue - neat, clean and efficient!

 

Here is the box for the type of egg emptier I own.  If you search online for "egg blower kit" you will find various sites that sell these - the prices seem to range from about six to nine dollars.

You can drill another hole in the opposite end if you want to thread a ribbon or a wire through the egg.  The blown out eggs are covered very simply by using some wallpaper paste and torn bits of gift tissue.  The irregular pieces are smoothed on and interesting effects are creating by the overlapping of the patterns.

This is the type of gift tissue that we used in Germany and England.  It is firmer than the tissue paper you normally see in the US and it has a pebbly sort of texture.  I still have some old packs - I am not sure if you can buy exactly  the same product here.

An alternative is to use colorful napkins such as these.  Separate the decorative top layer from the plain white second layer.  Then just tear up the colorful layer into small irregular pieces, dip in the wallpaper paste solution and smooth it onto your egg.  (You could probably use something like Mod Podge for this instead of the paste.  We used "tapeten kleister" in the German Kindergarten and I still have some - a box lasts forever).

 

When you are done and the eggs have dried, you simply thread the eggs on a length of wire, alternating with some wooden beads in a coordinating color.  Ribbons tied between the beads make the wreath fuller and prettier.  Don't make the circle too large - five or six eggs is about right.  If it is too large there is a tendency for it to pull out of shape.

Be sure to stop over to Everyday Cricut to see the various decorated eggs I created.  They are lots of fun to make but they do require some time and patience.  While I was working with the eggs I tried a few other types that I will share another day.