When I was little, I remember my mom blowing eggs out of their shells for scrambled eggs. She cleaned out and saved the eggs. Over a period of few weeks, she collected at least a dozen of them. We painted the eggs and made an Easter Egg tree. We had those eggs for a long, long time! I wanted to duplicate the project this year with my boys so I did a little internet research. I found a TON of great ideas!

For our tree, we went with brown eggs and muted acrylic paint. You can choose to use brown, white, or even dye them after you clean them out (I saw a picture of a beautiful tree all with dyed, robin's-egg-blue ones). I also saw someone use brightly colored plastic eggs instead of the real ones. Here are the steps we did to make our tree:


1. grasp the egg tightly in your fist, then use something small and sharp to sort of chip a hole in each side. I used a small pair of jewelry pliers.
2. Blow the egg out of the shell into a bowl. Fill the egg with water a few times (cover the holes with your fingers, shake the water around and blow it out to clean the inside).

3. Lay the eggs back into the carton and allow the water to drain out. After a while, dry the eggs and the container with a paper towel, place the eggs back in for just a bit longer until they are pretty dry inside.

4. Use a paper punch to make flowers (or purchase them...or any other shape you like for that matter). Put a dot of hot glue over one of the holes, lay a piece of ribbon in the glue and then press the flower down on top. Another option: feed ribbon through the egg (the holes have to be pretty well lined up top to bottom) and either tie a knot or use a bead to anchor the ribbon on the outside of the egg bottom. You can use another bead or knot at the top of the egg (loop the ribbon and tie it close to the top for hanging)

For ours, I just tied the ribbon together at the top after the flower had set in the glue.

Use acrylic paint to decorate the eggs. Hang for drying.

We found a good branch for our tree, spray painted it cream, anchored it into a vase with rocks and hung the eggs.

Ta Da!