I cut out little bunny shapes using my Silhouette Cameo. Now, any sticker with a pleasing silhouette would do for this project. Another option could be cutting shapes out of contact paper (self-adhesive shelf liner, often available at the dollar store). The girls stuck their bunny stickers onto their eggs before we dipped them into dye.

I considered doing natural dying methods… but I ran out of time and energy. I very much wanted to make dye from beets and berries and affix an Earth Mother badge onto my sash – but sometimes, $1.49 boxes of egg dye scream out to you from the store shelves, “I am so easy and fool-proof and quick… and easy… And you don’t even like beets!”

So, I bought the dye. And as a result, you could almost hear the “chop, chop, chop” propellor sounds coming from the Helicopter Mother hovering over the table. “Don’t get it on your clothes! Be careful! Use your egg holder thing!”

Oh yeah, I know how to bring fun to the party.

Okay, back to the action: stickers are placed onto the eggs and smoothed out (to avoid air bubbles and leakage at the corners).

The eggs are then dipped into the dye and left to soak up the fantastically vibrant colors. The longer the eggs swim in the dye, the brighter they are.

The eggs are taken out of their bath and put aside to dry for about five minutes. Then, the sticker is removed, revealing a while silhouette.

And voila! Beautiful silhouetted Easter eggs! You’ll notice that one bunny still has his sticker on. I was not the Director of Creativity for this project, so the girls decided on their favourite aesthetic. There are also smaller stickers running rampant all over these eggs. I’m mostly on the planning and clean-up crew for this gig.

We also lost a few eggs along the way. I hard-boiled the eggs (because there was no way that I was going to painstakingly blow out eggs so that they could shatter in clumsy hands) and I think it’s the safest way to go with my mini-artists. Yes, this means that the eggs had to be dyed quite close to Easter (as smelly eggs are not a typical part of Easter decor), but again, it was easy, and oftentimes the girls wouldn’t even notice that they had smashed the side of their eggs in. They just happiliy worked on the caved in eggs and proudly handed them to me once declared “decorated”.

And before I go, I want to give a little shout-out to these coloring sticks that I found next to the dye on the shelf. These Q-Tip-esque paint sticks (called Paas Color Snaps by those who want to seek them out) have dye in them, and allow the kids to paint right onto their eggs. The girls loved these! They happily coloured on their eggs before dumping them into their dye baths. And if you look at the photos of the “egg nest”, you’ll see that the eggs in the back have the paint-stick treatment. The colours are wild and allowed for bursts of creativity. I will most definitely buy these again.

We’re knocking on the door of the long weekend, and I am very excited for all things Easter! Especially the hunt… oh, who doesn’t love a good Easter egg hunt? (For the chocolate variety, and not the week-old hard boiled numbers that have been displayed sans refrigeration. It’s best not to think about it, actually.)