Melted-crayon Easter eggs

Ree and I tested out a new way to color eggs that we saw in our Family Fun magazine and it was a winner. Fun project, no potential for catastrophic messes (like we’ve had in the past when egg dye cups are knocked over, oy!), and cute results.

If you want to make these, here’s how:

First, gather your materials:
1. Eggs
2. Crayola crayons (don’t bother with the dollar-store or no-name ones, we tried them and they were weak!)
3. Something to hold the warm eggs while you’re coloring (we used little silicone cups because they were grippy -- you can also use an egg carton, a mini-muffin tin, or bottle caps)

Now hardboil a bunch of eggs (we put the eggs in a pan of cold water, turn on the heat, and then once the water is boiling remove the pan from the heat and let it all sit for 15 minutes). We also do a LOT of eggs, because we love to crack a bunch open, slather them with salt and pepper, and chow down while coloring.

Use tongs to take the eggs out of the still-hot water and put them in your holders. Now just color on the eggs with crayons. The wax will get all melty and the colors will look fab! We decorating and colored about the top 2/3 of each egg (the parts we could reach without turning the eggs). Then, once the wax had dried, turned the eggs over and colored the bottoms. The bottom parts weren’t as vivid since the eggs had cooled by that point, but looked better than leaving them white or turning the still-hot eggs over and smearing everything*.

Family Fun showed that you could also grate the crayons and sprinkle the pieces over the eggs. That looked really fun -- we didn’t try it this time (lazy mama syndrome) but will next time. And we know we’ll do this project again, because Ro was green with envy that she was off at school and didn’t get to get all creative with the crayons. Cheers!

(*Update: Emy had a GREAT suggestion in the comments that we are SO trying next time. She said: “Maybe you could do the shavings on the inside of the silicone cups that way the bottom would get colored while the top was getting done by the little ones.”)