You don’t need to decorate all of an egg. In many instances, the egg will live its life sitting on an egg cup, behind glass. They won’t be manhandled, felt, held, thrown, roughed up, knocked about: they are purely ornamental.
This means that the back of the egg will not get looked at, and you can put all your effort into the front.
Pressed Flowers
You wouldn’t believe how hard it was to find pressed flowers. I remember walking into any craft store and they’d be throwing them at me. Now, it was a matter of, “Do you have pressed flowers?”
Blank stare.
Try another shop, “Hi, I’m after some pressed flowers. You know, for scrap-booking and whatnot.”
Haven’t had ’em for years.
I would have done it myself, only A) I don’t have any phone books in the house and B) Easter was only a couple of days away. Finally I found a manky packet of coloured daisy flowers without a price tag tucked on an obscure shelf in a dinky shop in the middle of nowhere.
“It’ll do.”
Moulded Flowers
These were easier to find. On my travels to Lincraft, they had these in packets on the shelf. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes, all flat backed which makes it a little awkward to stick on a rounded surface, but the little ones were just fine.
Their weight makes the egg top and forward heavy, so the end product needs to be balance back onto the egg cup to stop it from tipping. Not a problem, they still look good.
General Pattern
- Coloured the eggs, as you can see, in a solid purple, peach or blue. Any strong colour will do. Three coats, allowing drying time between coats.
- Get some craft glue (make sure it dries clear). Sop it on the back of the flower, stick it on. Make sure they’re good and dry before you proceed. Wait overnight if you need to. Don’t rush this bit.
- Getting a piece of foam, I cut out a circle shape, dipped that in white paint and made the cluster of eight around the central flower. Allow to dry (don’t you love acrylics?).
- Using a fine brush, place either a dot or radiating strokes from the centre of each ‘cluster flower’. They’ll be dry by the time you finish up.
- Get a one inch brush, some polyurethane gloss and brush it on lightly, getting into all of the crevices of the flower.
- Give it another gloss coat.
- Find some decent egg cups, voila!
If you like, get some ribbon and ‘tie’ the egg to the cup before gifting. A bow around the midriff or from top to bottom looks shmicko. Use craft glue to hold it in place rather than tying a knot: Eggs are slippery little suckers, and, as above, if it’s an ornament, you can afford to ‘cheat’ a little.