Gorgeous Easter Eggs

“Aren’t these eggs gorgeous?  They’re amazing!  Have you seen the Easter eggs?”  This is what I keep repeating to my Husband and Sister.  The reason I’m so impressed is because our kiddos (ages 2, 3 and 5) painted them!  Maybe I’m excited too because this Easter activity was about to be a bust and it turned into a beautiful success!

This art activity was inspired by my egg dying mess and failure last year.  It was also inspired by my son’s Motor Class activity, laying on the floor and making balls move by blowing on them, he kept reenacting it so I knew
it had to be fun!  So, this is how we painted these swirling Easter eggs.  Here are our supplies:

• Paper Mache Eggs, found at Michael’s (wooden eggs would work too, found it the wood section)
• White Acrylic Paint
• Acrylic Paint Set, found at Michael’s (I liked this set because it had a wide variety of colors, no mixing needed to make pink)
• Shoe box tops
• Popsicle sticks
• A shallow cup or bowl

Step 1:  In a wide shallow cup or bowl (mine was too small) add a good amount of white acrylic paint (thin the paint by adding water).  Then, dip baby dip to cover the Paper Mache Eggs white.

This is big time messy with helpers so you may want do this as prep ahead of time.  I had tiny white dots of acrylic paint splattered everywhere on my granite!

2.  Let the excess paint drip off into an egg carton.  Then allow to completely dry on foil or plastic baggies.  Don’t stress about nicks in the paint, the colored paint will cover it up.  For faster drying, flip the eggs every now and then.

3.  Once the paint dries, the fun can begin!  Pour rows of colored paint onto a shoe box lid.  Like this:

I liked the results of the rainbow color combo the best but we also played around with an Easter looking combo:

4.  Get the kiddos READY TO ROLL!  My original plan was to blow the egg with a straw across the stripes.  But I really wasn’t thinking because when the egg reached the paint it came to a halt.  I thought this whole activity was a bust!

The kids didn’t think it was a bust.  They just used their straw to tap and roll it through the paint.  They sure knew how to roll with the punches:

To prevent the paint from getting too stirred up we had each egg make 1 to 1 1/2 trips through the stripes before we picked it up to take a look.

The kids loved watching the paint mix onto the white egg.  Even the dude with a short attention span had fun:

We placed these on big Ziploc baggies to dry and then for faster drying we flipped them over every once and a while.  Here are a few more pics of the finished product:

I’ve always wanted to attempt Japanese Paper Marbling (click here to see it in action, it’s called Suminagashi), but I had no idea we’d sorta be doing it to decorate Easter eggs!

They are works of art made by little kids.  And I can get enough!

Last pic.  Suminagashi Easter Eggs standing at attention!:

If you get inspired by this post, please please post pics on the TITYN facebook page!  I’d love to share and post them in an album.  Have fun with this Easter Activity for Kids (or for grown-ups like me)!  I’m keeping these eggs forever!