I was aimlessly wandering around the interweb the other day, and I came across a post on Balancing Home showing her spring mantle decor – featuring eggs in nests as specimen art. I loved the look, but Megan wrote that she had found her little nests on clearance – last year – at Target for $3. So I admired, bookmarked, and then said, “Well, unless Doc Brown drives the DeLorean onto my driveway, I guess that craft won’t be happening this year!”

Then, I was strolling through the Dollar Store – like I do – and I came across these little beauties in the seasonal aisle. They were $1.50 (this particular dollar store has some things that are not just a dollar. Sigh.), but I picked up two packages. I can work with these! I feel craft-spiration coming on!

Then I opened them.

Holy crap. Is this where Big Bird’s harem goes to lay their eggs? What kind of muppet atrocity is this?

The original piece featured groups of eggs that were different colors (pink, blue, green). I looked at my speckled eggs and thought, “I can fix this!”

Because I didn’t want the color to be opaque, I opted not to use my acrylic paints. Instead, I dug into the kids’ craft supplies and came up with Crayola! I know – Martha could learn something from me, couldn’t she?

Probably not…. but anyways…

It requires a bit of trial and error. What’s awesome is that because Crayola is washable, you can easily fix mistakes if you’re a bit too heavy on one color.

And unless you have a pink paint handy, I wouldn’t recommend trying out a red paint. I ended up creating something out of a vegan person’s nightmare. Those eggs were promptly washed off.

I ended up with two bluish-green nests, which I quite liked. The sponge added a mottled quality to make the eggs look more realistic.

I attached the eggs to a piece of cardstock and matted it. They’re attached with double-sided tape, and so far, so good! They’re housed in the same frame that my It’s Raining Hearts Valentine’s Artwork was in. I just removed the glass in order to give it a shadow-box quality.

I’m quite happy with how it turned out! $3 in Dollar Store nests, perhaps $.10 in cardstock, and the rest was already kicking around the house! This could be a great kids’ project (especially the plucking of scary feathers from the nest), but I did this project solo.

Oh! And a P.S. to this post: I understand why it is called “Specimen Art”, but ugh, isn’t the most unromantic way of describing it? I wish I was called “Collection Art” or something else a bit less “I’m going to dissect this in Biology class and try not to dry heave”.

And speaking of kids’ crafts and springtime, we are working on another Dollar Store craft of papier-mache eggs right now. Come back soon to see how they turned out and how you, too, can make your kitchen table a giant swampy mess!