Easter eggs. Anyone can do that, right? Well, that’s what I thought anyway. I decided to do some decoupage eggs as Martha shows in April Martha Stewart Living and also the glitter eggs that are mentioned at the front of the magazine as being online (and are also in the Craft Encyclopedia). This sounded like something I could manage.
The first step was getting the eggs. Blowing out eggs was way too much work for me. Martha says in the magazine you can find blown out eggs at “any craft store”. Ha! Neither Michael’s nor Joann had them. Joann had no eggs of any kind – nothing wooden, paper, etc (and snotty people working there who were not interested in helping me). What craft store has NO wooden or faux eggs available 2 weeks before Easter?
Michael’s had wooden eggs so I bought some of those. I also bought some Mod Podge glue. As for decoupage, I simply do not have the fine motor skills to cut out the shapes in the template in the magazine. Not a chance. So I thought I would be clever and buy some Easter stickers and some cute little confetti.
Sticker Shock
The first thing I did was to paint the eggs I was going to decoupage. The first problem was that that the price stickers would not come off!
I don’t know how you paint these without getting fingerprints all over them. I ended up doing several coats and got it all over my hands and the table. I kept dropping the eggs (good thing they weren’t real!).
Painting
Glue for Glitter
While those dried, I attempted to do the glitter eggs. I read the instructions in the craft encyclopedia several times. It says to hold the egg and paint it with glue then set it in the glitter and cover it. If you hold the egg while putting glue on, the glue comes off on your hands and does not stick to the egg. When you pick the egg up out of the glitter, the glitter comes off on your hands. This is why my first egg ended up with bald spots! I tried to dab a little more glue on and put more glitter, but that was unsuccessful.
Bald Patch
I was ready to toss the damn eggs out the window, when Mr. MarthaAndMe suggested sticking a nail in the bottom of each one so I could hold the nail. The man is a genius. This worked perfectly and I ended up with evenly glittered eggs that looked pretty darn nice. He made some holes in a piece of wood so we could just stick the nails in it and let the eggs dry. My father-
The Solution
in-law says you can do anything if you have the right tools, and again he was proven correct. I think the instructions for this craft made it sound far too simple and did not offer enough guidance.
Next, onto the decoupage. I have never decoupaged, but after hearing Rosie O’Donnell rave about it for years, I thought, how hard could it be? I’ve seen her demonstrate it several times and it looked so easy.
Disaster
Wrong. The problem probably lies in my materials and I am willing to admit that up front. The stickers did not work. First of all, they were too large and crumpled at the edges because the eggs are curved. Mr. MarthaAndMe said they were too thick to work and that somehow the adhesive on the stickers interfered with the glue. Similar problem with the confetti – it would not stick. I was using Martha Stewart confetti and it was kind of stiff.
The Ones that Turned Out
Again, I was ready to open the window and pitch the damn things out, but Mr. MarthaAndMe suggested we just hole punch some white paper and use the dots to make polka dots with decoupage. You can see why I married this man. This worked pretty well. I had some trouble with the glue making the paint moist and the paint smearing and coming off. I was also able to use the tiny Easter egg stickers I had – some of them stuck and some of it didn’t.
Was this fun? Umm, no. It made me crazy. It made a mess. It was not cheap. I would rather buy some decorative eggs for display than monkey around with this and have it never be quite right.
I guess the Easter bunny will not be too happy with me this year.
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For all the difficulty, they look great! I wanted to try Martha’s chocolate filled eggs but am scared to blow out eggs. I’m afraid wooden ones wouldn’t do for that project though.
The ones that worked are cute. I like the polka dots and the glitter ones are nice too (except they are still shedding glitter everywhere). I know – egg blowing just seems like an incredibly difficult thing to me.
Sorry it wasn’t fun. I love the way the glitter eggs look, though!
How fun! I got the April living at the weekend and am tempted to try the eggs but wondered how much glitter I would have to use – by the looks of it, I would need a lot.
Think I will stick to colour the eggs with food dye – so much easier!
Actually it did not take a lot. I used Martha’s glitter which came in 3 or 4 inch tall cylinders. For each egg I would say I used maybe 1/4 to 1/2 an inch of it – making sure I put back in the tube what I could when I was done.
I don’t know what the magazine directions say, but I saw her and Rosie O’Donnell making these on tv. She put a bamboo barbecue skewer inside the hole in the egg to make a “handle” so that she could paint or glitter without any contact between the egg and her hands. The nail into wooden eggs is similar in concept. They also did the hole punch dots for circles and they do look cute. As for blowing out eggs, there is a tool on the market that makes it pretty easy to do. It gets inserted into the egg and kinda helps pull out the egg from the shell. I don’t remember where I got mine, but I would bet its a Martha gadget and you can probably find it on the internet somewhere, if not in the Martha department of Macy’s, Michael’s or Wal-Mart.
Yes, I saw them do it too. The directions in the book do not say anything about using anything as a handle, which I found very frustrating. I’m going to buy one of those things to get the egg out for next year. It looks pretty neat.