Playing Around with Beautiful Brown Eggs for Easter

Playing Around with Beautiful Brown Eggs for Easter: "

I've been playing around with brown eggs this week!

Having never even considered using brown eggs at Easter, I was more than a little apprehensive last year when I learned that Sophia and Antonio had been dying brown eggs for Easter.

Turns out - brown eggs are beautiful when dyed and tomorrow I will show you Sophia's and Antonio's tricks!

Today, however, I wanted to share some beautiful brown eggs I have been playing around with - revisiting techniques I have used in the past and some great ideas from fellow bloggers.

The Magic Onions has given us a wonderful tutorial for dying eggs with silk scarves. I don't happen to have a silk scarf in the house but I do have a hank of sari silk yarn and I decided to use that instead.

Because I used the yarn instead of the silk scarf, I made a few adjustments in the process which I am sharing. However, the tutorial for dying with silk belongs to the Magic Onions and you will need to go to the original tutorial to get all the details.

Note: All the eggs used in this post and the one to follow were blown out.

I followed the instructions except that I wrapped my egg with Sari silk yarn. I found that wetting the egg and the yarn prior to wrapping makes wrapping MUCH easier.

Using a piece of old muslin, I wrapped the egg tightly and secured it with twine.

The tutorial suggests using a rock as a weight. I tried a technique I use when softening corn husks - I place a smaller pan of water in the large pot of water and on top of the husks to weigh them down and keep them submerged.

This system seemed to work very well. My egg is actually behind the smaller pan.

Once the suggested boiling time ended, I removed the egg and unwrapped it. Judging from the pale colors that bled onto the muslin, I didn't have very high hopes.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the colors in the silk yarn had transferred to the egg beautifully.

And what I love is that every egg will be different. And - I dried the silk yarn and it can still be used in a knitted or woven project.

Three or four years ago, Diane and I took a Pysanky class together. And despite my obvious lack of skill, I have to say - I had a ball! (The egg looks MUCH better at a distance. Funny how that works.

Here is a fantastic tutorial for making Pysanky from That Artist Woman.

I am still very intimidated by the wax application so I haven't tried again, even though I have all the necessary dyes and tools carefully stowed away in my craft cabinet.

Since I am not intimidated by Sharpies, I decided to try to duplicate my little Pysanky using a blown brown egg (background color is already done) and some purple, turquoise and lime Sharpies.

You have got to try this! What fun! No special equipment needed.

And if you need inspiration or want to use authentic designs, you will find bunches of them here!OMG - there are Christmas Pysanky Designs!

One Pretty Thing recently featured a tutorial on Martha Stewart for applying napkin cut-outs to eggs using Mod Podge.

And it just so happens I have some very pretty butterfly napkins!

Since my egg is brown and the napkin background is blue, I actually cut right at the edges of the design leaving the antennae behind. They were added with a black Sharpie after two coats of Mod Podge were dry and before applying a coat of acrylic spray.

Go to Martha's tutorial for full instructions.

It has occurred to me that the wonderful temporary tattoos available almost anywhere should work beautifully on the eggs and would be great fun for kids. And much less messy.

And check out this tutorial on The Magic Onion. She used transfers and rub-ons to create very similar results.

It has been at least six or seven years since I played around with applying dried, pressed flowers to eggs using Mod Podge. They have all held up beautifully. (Of course I only used white eggs!)

Pansies and Lobelia seem to hold their color better than the other flowers I used. I still have a supply from the flowers I dried for decorating gourds, so I decided to apply a few to a brown egg.

I think Mod Podge and Pansies have a special thing going because when I place a pale dried Pansy blossom onto a Mod Podge covered surface, it instantly turns back into it's beautiful, vibrant former self! This rarely happens with most other flowers.

Since I was playing with my dried flowers and eggs long before I started Gingerbread Snowflakes, I have never made a tutorial, but guess who has? Yup! The Magic Onions! So if you are interested in a great "how-to" you will find it here.

Now here is my big fat failure! One of those ideas that pops into my brain when I am awake in the middle of the night! They are not always great! They just sound great at 3:00 AM.

Anyway, I got this idea that since Pansies have saturated colors that hold up well for application to eggs and gourds, maybe - just maybe - if I secured one to the surface of an egg and boiled it, the color and shape would magically be transfered to the egg.

Well some of the color was transfered alright, but there was nothing magical about the results! To me it looks more like a tattoo gone bad.

And finally for today - my little mosaic egg which was made using a brown egg and bits and pieces of the Kool-aid colored eggs made last Easter. I couldn't bear to toss out the shells - the colors were so pretty - so I saved them and broke them into tiny pieces and with the help of good old Mod Podge, have saved them forever!

Tomorrow - come back to see how Sophia and Antonio dye brown eggs!

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