Easter Egg Decorating Idea #1: Papier Mache

I found this cute idea for making Easter Egg Placecard holders and decided it would be fun to do. I am on a quest this year for creative ideas for decorating Easter eggs. No one in my house but me likes hard-boiled eggs, so dyeing them the traditional way isn’t  practical but I love the colorful, decorated eggs! So off I went to Hobby Lobby for the simple supplies needed for this colorful Easter Egg decorating idea. Of course, I bought some other supplies, too, since all of their Easter decorations were on sale, but that’s another post coming soon.

Maggie and I sat down one afternoon and started to cover the eggs with the colorful tissue paper. We made way too much of the glue/water mixture and started looking for something else to cover with papier mache. I said it would be cute to make a basket to put the eggs in and Maggie decided a Kleenex box would be perfect. We still haven’t added the pieces to make the place holders but we were thrilled with the colorful eggs and matching basket. We are going to a party on Saturday for an Easter Egg hunt and this will make a precious hostess gift!

Here’s how we did it.

Supplies:

• Colorful tissue paper in spring colors*
• White glue
• Styrofoam eggs (you could easily use real eggs that have been hollowed out and dried as well.) We used two different sizes.
• Square tissue box
• Small artificial flowers
• Ribbon
• Waxed paper or plastic tablecloth
• Bowl
• Water
• Paper towels for clean up
• Wire rack for drying eggs

Instructions:

Tear tissue paper into small pieces, about 2 to 3 inches, any shape.

Mix one part glue with two parts water in a bowl.

Spread waxed paper or a plastic tablecloth onto your work area.

Dip tissue paper into glue mixture, allow extra to drip back into bowl or squeeze off with fingers. This part is messy but fun, use the paper towels to clean up in between eggs as needed. Layer tissue on egg until you have the desired effect. It did not take a lot of paper per egg. We bought way too much tissue paper and made too much of the glue/water mixture.

Place eggs on the wire rack to dry. Allow to dry overnight. Don’t let eggs touch each other or they will stick together.

For the tissue box basket, cut the bottom 2/3 of the box off to make a square. We used the top part of the box to cut a 1 1/2′ wide handle. Once the pieces were covered with papier mache and dried completely, we glued the handle to the inside of the box. We used green tissue inside the box and added a few artificial pink and yellow roses plus a bright ribbon.

*Note: We found that the thicker, decorative tissue worked better than the traditional thin layers. We found that the thinner papers worked best if we used several layers at once.