Guide to Hand painted Easter Eggs

I can scarcely believe a Lockdown year has passed since I hand painted these Easter eggs which went viral across instagram.

I’ve always believed that ordinary materials can be made into objects to be treasured. When I asked my Mother a few years ago why she was still holding on to the slightly grotty looking fringed, papier-mâché bin which my Granny made during the war, she replied ‘I can’t bear to, she made something out of nothing, when she had so little.’

When I hand painted these designs, eggs were like hens teeth, we’d all gone baking mad and supermarkets were in ration overdrive. Rumours went down in my street that if you asked the chap in the corner shop, he had eggs under the counter for his ‘very best’ customers. I hesitated over using my Cotswold Legg bar pastel coloured eggs ( my absolute favourite) for fear of bragging. But I rationalised there could be no better time for zero waste and some decoration on those shells.

So here are my very simple steps to hand painting your eggs for Easter.

You will need; an unpicker, eggs, paints, paintbrush, pencil, rubber, possibly some paper too.

1. Wash & dry your egg (carefully) if you are worried about germs. I'm a country girl, this step doesn’t bother me.

2. Bore out a hole top and bottom. I find the best tool for this is an unpicker. GO SLOWLY. Lightly Tap a first chip out of the shell with the sharp end and then bore gently with the unpicker so as not to crack the shell. You don’t want a huge hole ( just enough to evacuate)

3. Blow the egg out into a bowl, make a cake, omelette or scrambled eggs. Can you tell I have a horror of food waste?

4. Wash, dry and mark out your motif with a pencil.

   *If you need help, trace a motif onto tracing paper/baking parchment, pencil the reverse and trace on to the egg. Tracing over a round surface is not the easiest, but you will have enough to work with.

5. Paint your motif with a base colour of paint, I used white here.

   * I like acrylics, but always encourage you to look around the house before you rush out to buy anything you won’t use again. There’s always a paint sample or Sharpie lying around. Or in my case, some gold paint I’d had for decades.

6. Give it a contrast colour to outline, or emphasise, I used navy paint here.

7. Allow to dry and arrange in a pretty bowl.

8. Or thread some ribbon through, tie a knot and hang on your Easter Tree;

9. Save your egg boxes to store away for next year.