In our continuing saga of non-traditional Easter egg dying crafts, we decided to go for something a low tech this year. (Can Easter egg dying be considered high tech? Maybe we'll just say we dirtied fewer bowls.)
May I present: Dyeless Easter Egg Dying
First, you boil some eggs. While that's happening on the stove, take one of those little plastic pencil sharpeners and shave up as many crayons as you care to not have anymore. Make little piles of colors with the shavings.
Then, take a boiled egg out of the hot water with tongs and dry it off with a towel. Leave the rest of the eggs in the hot water for now, you'll be doing this one by one and they need to stay warm. While your dry egg is still very hot, sprinkle crayon shavings over it in whatever design you wish and watch the colored wax melt all over the egg.
They're gonna be hot, and therefore difficult to touch if you need to steady them. Every time we touched them, melted crayon smeared around and melted onto our fingers like candle wax. This is probably fine if you're a violinist/guitarist like me and have no feeling in your fingertips anymore, but if you're under ten and still have baby-skin covering your phalanges, it might hurt a bit. It also mess with your design. I finally put them in these little ramekins to keep them from rolling around.
The ramekins make it much easier to decorate the egg without touching it and to prevent the egg from rolling off the table and leaving a melted crayon trail across your floor. But they also make it harder to decorate the entire egg. Once you turn it to do the other side, the wax will mush all around in the bowl and muddy up your awesome design. I have not yet figured out a better procedure for this. But then again, I'm not certain how much of a design you can actually create with this method. It's more of a Jackson Pollack effect.
You will, however, have to have some restraint when it comes to determining that your egg is complete, because if you put too much stuff on there, it starts to look like a crayon barfed all over your egg. Also, those tips of the crayons that you couldn't fully cut down into shavings are too thick to actually melt. Your mother may already know this, but you gotta give it a try anyway.
May I present: Dyeless Easter Egg Dying
First, you boil some eggs. While that's happening on the stove, take one of those little plastic pencil sharpeners and shave up as many crayons as you care to not have anymore. Make little piles of colors with the shavings.
Then, take a boiled egg out of the hot water with tongs and dry it off with a towel. Leave the rest of the eggs in the hot water for now, you'll be doing this one by one and they need to stay warm. While your dry egg is still very hot, sprinkle crayon shavings over it in whatever design you wish and watch the colored wax melt all over the egg.
They're gonna be hot, and therefore difficult to touch if you need to steady them. Every time we touched them, melted crayon smeared around and melted onto our fingers like candle wax. This is probably fine if you're a violinist/guitarist like me and have no feeling in your fingertips anymore, but if you're under ten and still have baby-skin covering your phalanges, it might hurt a bit. It also mess with your design. I finally put them in these little ramekins to keep them from rolling around.
The ramekins make it much easier to decorate the egg without touching it and to prevent the egg from rolling off the table and leaving a melted crayon trail across your floor. But they also make it harder to decorate the entire egg. Once you turn it to do the other side, the wax will mush all around in the bowl and muddy up your awesome design. I have not yet figured out a better procedure for this. But then again, I'm not certain how much of a design you can actually create with this method. It's more of a Jackson Pollack effect.
You will, however, have to have some restraint when it comes to determining that your egg is complete, because if you put too much stuff on there, it starts to look like a crayon barfed all over your egg. Also, those tips of the crayons that you couldn't fully cut down into shavings are too thick to actually melt. Your mother may already know this, but you gotta give it a try anyway.
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March 31, 2013 at 4:21 PM
This is an excellent, creative idea. I am impressed.