When I got an email from school reminding me that entries for the Easter Egg Painting competition needed to be handed in this week, I went into a slight panic. Although we love doing crafts together, he can be a bit easily distracted if something isn’t done and dusted in one session. We chatted about what we could do and between us we came up with three easy ideas for painted eggs.
This was very much a two-day job. We needed to paint our hard-boiled eggs a few days in advance so they could dry properly, then finish them off another day.
We had decided to make ladybird, a strawberry and a flowering cactus painted eggs. We’ve painted stones and ladybirds and strawberries before, so I knew we could probably do them easily.
I hard-boiled three eggs and left them to cool overnight. The next day the boy painted two of them red and one green; we left them to dry overnight. I’d left them in the little painting bowls we used, so I needed to turn them so they’d dry evenly.
Painted Eggs – A Strawberry
We started off with the strawberry which he had painted red. While he used a black marker pen to draw dots on for seeds, I cut out some green tissue paper for the leaves and made a pipecleaner stem which I bent at the bottom. Using a glue gun I glued the leaves and stem to the top of the strawberry and left it to dry. To present it, we nestled it in an egg try on top of some shredded yellow paper for straw.
Painted Eggs – A Flowering Cactus
Next we moved on to our flowering cactus. This was quite simple. While I made a pink flower out of a couple of scraps of pink tissue paper, he drew X’s all over to look like cactus prickles. Once he’d finished, I used the hot glue gun to stick the tissue paper on top. Then we turned an empty cardboard kitchen roll tube into a plant pot for the cactus. We cut it down and taped up the bottom so the egg wouldn’t fall out. We then filled the pot with tissue paper and then nestled the cactus on top.
Painted Eggs – A Ladybird
Finally we painted up the ladybird. I drew the line down its back and made a circle for its face, he coloured the face in black and added the spots. Then I used the hot glue gun to fix some googly eyes to its face and it was done.
I think these are really simple to do and they look great too. My son and I enjoyed working on them together. I could probably have easily used PVA glue instead of the glue gun; but it was quicker and the glue dries much faster. Plus I wanted to try out my new toy (I have the burnt fingers to show for it too)!
If you enjoyed this, you might also like these other Easter Crafts: