Fun Friday Find: A Handmade Easter Ornament

This one is my favorite!

Happy Friday! The anticipation for Easter is building.
Every year I give my mom and a few others a painted egg. Today I'd like to tell you how to make these pretty Easter egg ornaments. I'll tell you how to blow out an egg and give you some inspiration for decorating it. This is a very special gift to make for someone and they are actually pretty simple. Just be careful- they are delicate!

First, you'll need to blow out an egg for each ornament that you want to make. Sound disturbing? (I will not be showing pictures of me doing this!) There really is no other way- I've tried using a syringe and it kind of works but not great. More often than not it cracks the egg or makes too big of a hole. 

Go ahead and wash the eggs and dry them. 

You'll need to poke a hole in both ends of the egg. To do this I have used a tack- that works pretty well but you will have to pick around the hole to make it a bit larger and that is a very delicate business. I did the eggs like that for years and then last year I had an epiphany- use a Dremel! Duh!

A Dremel is the way to go if you have one. I use a 3/16 drill bit which makes a perfect size hole!

Next you'll have to poke something into the hole in the egg to break the yolk. I use a toothpick. It makes it easier to blow out.

Now just blow in one end and the scrambled egg will come out the other. 

After the scrambled egg is out, put some clean water into the egg by running a fine stream of water into the hole, fill it about half way, shake it, blow the water out. Do that a couple of times.

Now, this is where you can get creative. I'll show you some of the eggs I've done and some that my sister has made for me.

Here I used gold  and white acrylic paint. I used watercolor paint for the light blue and light yellow eggs. For the writing I used an Italian poetry rubber stamp that I inked up with gold paint and then rolled the egg on it.

If you want to paint details, it makes it easier to lay the egg in a bowl of rice to keep it from rolling around.

One way to hang the egg is to pass a piece of ribbon through both holes and  knot the end or add a bead to keep it from pulling back through. Put a knot on the top to cover the hole.

Here my sister mod podged origami paper onto the egg. You can buy these little gold doohickeys (technical term) at the craft store in the jewelery making section. Its much easier to hot glue this to the top of the egg right over the hole and pass some gold floss or ribbon through. This is easier than doing it the previous way. (It's hard to get the ribbon through both of the holes).

Another one my sister did. She glued embroidery floss and trim onto the egg. If you are completely covering the egg maybe you don't need to use a real egg- unless you're a purist :)

Here is another one I did with watercolors. Just sloshed it on and then patted it off. For the hanger I used a gold doohickey thing and some brass wire and beads. They look so pretty in the sun!

I was lucky enough to find these little "French" Chinese take-out boxes to gift my eggs in this year

I made a little nest out of raffia to protect it.
How cute is that? 

I think anyone would be thrilled to receive one of these special decorated eggs. I hope you try it! 

Have a great weekend!  Michelle

Get In On The Free Pet Portrait Give Away

{click on the photo to get all of the details}

I'm linking this project to the first blog I ever followed, Christina's Adventures and her 

20 Below Thursday's Linky Party!