Easy Easter egg decorating ideas

We don’t really do a big celebration at Easter.  N gets a few eggs from family, and there’s a big family meal.  Then we try and get out somewhere locally if the weather’s good.  We don’t decorate the house either, but last year I decorated eggs for the first time.  This year I’d been planning to try naturally dyed ones again, as well as using lace to dye a pattern, but decided to opt for an easier method, ie Sharpies.

I did try tying lace around one egg, and stippling paint over the lace, but the pattern didn’t come out at all.  But the Sharpies of course worked brilliantly.  The hardest thing is deciding what designs to do.

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I decided to decorate some egg boxes as well, to make the eggs look prettier.  Plus of course you can use the egg boxes to store other items afterwards.  I had a green and pink one to start with, plus a grey box.  I kept the pink one as was, but painted the other 2 with a pastel lime and purple.

I just used tester paint pots, but whatever paint you have should do the job.  Egg boxes dry really quickly too which is handy when you want to get on with decorating.

Once dry I got some patterned papers and washi tape from my stash.  The papers I cut to size and stuck on using modge podge as glue, and as a top layer to ensure they stayed stuck down.  The washi tape I used for simple stripe designs.

After hard boiling my eggs in my 7 egg boiler* (N was going to have a go at decorating so I thought he’d be better with hard boiled ones), I got out the Sharpies.  I didn’t have any one theme in mind, but here’s some egg decorating ideas:

• planets, sun, moon, stars
• animals
• geometric patterns
• book titles or characters
• nursery rhymes or fairy stories
• places or buildings
• flowers
• insects (butterflies would be really pretty)

Don’t think that you need to cover the whole egg either.  If you display them standing in egg cups or the like, then you might only need the front on show.  Alternatively paint or dye the whole egg a pale colour for a base, and then do the design on top of that.  I used standard brown eggs, but paler ones will obviously be a prettier egg and better base.

Easter egg design ideas

Geometric patterns

Given I had the washi tape out, I decide to try using it to mask lines on the eggs before colouring over with the Sharpies.  I did one egg in a spiral pattern all over.  This was a bit of a nightmare because obviously the tape is straight and an egg isn’t.  But I just pressed down as best as I could where the egg curved.  The other egg I wrapped the tape around it in a random pattern, although it ended up almost being in a union jack cross shape in two places.

Then I chose the colours I wanted, coloured the gaps in and then removed the tape.  With the stripy egg, I also coloured in the masked area to create metallic stripes.

They turned out really well, although thinner washi tape may have been more interesting to use.

Easter themed animals

Of course Easter makes people think of the Easter bunny, chicks and lambs.  So I decided to try these.

Lamb

I didn’t have a white pen (damn, do Sharpie even do those?) so it had to be silver.  I drew on a silver oval on the front of the egg, then added black curls to signify the wool, and a face.  N wasn’t convinced by it (you can tell I’m not an artist), but it kind of worked.

Easter chick

I drew on a yellow circle with wings, outlined in black, added eyes, feet, and orange beak, and highlights in the wings and on the head.

Easter bunny

This one started off as my lamb base, with white craft paint.  I gave up, but the texture is quite effective for fur. Instead of doing a lamb, I just drew on a rabbit’s face with long ears, whiskers and eyes.

Of course you could try any animal, but I knew I’d be struggling with many more types.

Sky themed

Rainbow

Seeing all my Sharpies in their pot made me think of a rainbow so decided to base one egg on a rainbow.  I simply ordered the 7 colours, then drew on concentric rings from the outside to inside of the front (based on an oval shape).  You could start with a circle, and just do horizontal or vertical stripes, or even a rainbow curve – maybe with a blue sky behind it for the base, or just keep filling in the rainbow colour order like I did.

Moon and stars

N loves the moon, so I decided my final egg would be a moon and stars theme.  I coloured in a dark blue base, waited for it to dry to make sure.  Then drew on a crescent moon and some stars.  It worked out really well and it’s my favourite of all of them.

N did get to decorate a couple of eggs.  But he seemed more interested in eating them, so ended up with only 1 of his 3 being decorated…in his own unimitable style!

Buy a selection of Sharpies* at Amazon.

Do you decorate for Easter?  What method do you use for decorating eggs?

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