Easter Kid’s Craft – Painted Eggs

This is a craft project most kids really enjoy. It is the perfect craft idea for Easter and egg painting can be a great yearly tradition for the family. You can use either boiled eggs (which can be eaten afterwards) or, if the children want to keep their artwork or you're making Easter decorations, you can paint on blown out eggs.

• If you are going to use blown out eggs rather than hard boiled eggs, this will need to be done by an adult. The first step is to pierce both ends of the egg with a large needle.

• Use the needle or one of Fiskars crafting knives to slightly widen the hole at the narrower end of the egg.

• Before you can blow out the contents of the egg out you will need to break the yolk. Do this by inserting the needle and swirling it around the inside of the egg.

• Place a bowl underneath the egg, put your mouth over the hole at the broader end of the egg and blow. You could also insert a narrow straw into the hole and blow through it. The egg should start to run out of the larger hole.

• Once you have blown out most of the contents, stick the egg under a tap and fill it with water through the larger hole. Drain the water out. Repeat until the water is coming out clear and the entire contents of the egg have been removed.

• Leave to thoroughly dry out.

• When the egg is dry, you may want to put a little glue around the edge of the hole to help prevent cracking.

• Once the egg is prepared, your child can paint it. Decide if you want to keep the background on your painted egg plain or coloured. If you want a coloured background, you can either dye it with food colouring or paint the entire egg with a base coat. Painting a base coat is the more laborious option, but if you are using the more usual brown eggs (rather than white) it can give a much brighter and more colourful finish. Sponge painting works well for the background.

• Paint on your design. The best paints to use are watercolours or acrylic. You could also use pens rather than paint.

• If you want, glue on further embellishments such as beads, sequins, ribbon, glitter and googley eyes.

Leanne is a contributing writer to several baby and child websites, writing on topics such as the best places to buy moses basket covers.