Today for Friday field trip, I’m kicking it back to kindergarten.  I’m adapting some old school techniques to egg decorating to create some Easter eggs to use in my coastal décor.

I am using two easy techniques that you – like me – probably used in grade school, but may not have thought about using in creating your Easter egg designs!

It was probably earlier than kindergarten when my siblings and I discovered this first technique. ..purely by accident.  During our egg dyeing sessions, inevitably, the hard boiled eggs we were preparing to dye were constantly being dropped by our young, clumsy hands during our egg dyeing frenzy.

We would soon learn that the many cracks these drops created in the shells would cause the eggs inside to take on the dye.  When it came time to eat the eggs, no one wanted to eat the ones that had been cracked and dyed with the spider web-like effect.  Of course, as we got older, this became a cool effect that we would purposely emulate and enhance – learning by experience (the obvious) that the longer the egg remained in the dye, the more pronounced the design would appear.

It made me smile this month when I saw a full page in the current Real Simple magazine giving instructions to create this very same effect on an Easter egg.  The instructions said to crack the egg with a spoon…or, (not mentioned in the magazine) drop egg continually on a table while excitedly anticipating the Easter bunny’s arrival!

The second old school technique I use on eggs wasn’t used on eggs at all back in kindergarten.  We used it to create a leaf painting.  Various shaped leaves were placed on a paper and paint, in fall colors, was splattered over the leaves.  When the leaves were removed, their shapes would appear, like magic, against the splattered background.

The splattering was done with an old toothbrush and a Popsicle stick.  Rubbing the Popsicle stick across a paint filled toothbrush created a beautiful splattered effect.  I used this very same technique to create the eggs shown here – using brown paint on eggs dyed in sea glass colors.

What was it that Robert Fulghum said?  “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten?”

Have a great weekend and remember to take pleasure in simple things, Jackie

Sharing with Common Ground, Shabby Nest, Fridays Unfolded, Craftberry Bush, and Crafts a la Mode.