Egg Shell Collage

(E was 29 months old.)

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You’ll need:

• Dyed broken egg shells.
• Contact paper.

 

How to dye broken egg shells:

We actually used left over shells from dyed Easter eggs for this project, and you can absolutely use them as is.

I chose to re-dye the shells to make both sides the same color, and you can simply use plain egg shells if you do the same.

I collected the broken egg shells after we ate the eggs, removed much of inner white skin, and dumped them into cups of Easter egg dye. You can use food coloring instead, just add some vinegar for added intensity.

Leave the egg shells in the dye until they’re a shade you like, then drain the dye and set them out to dry for several hours. If you want, you can speed up the process by placing them in the oven.

{A note on the inner white skin on the egg shells: I thought it needed to be removed, since on a trial piece, the shell underneath was still white after a short time in the egg dye.

However, upon reading about other people’s versions of this project after the fact, it seems that simply letting the egg shells dry out completely (skin and all) will do the trick.

In my case, I did get a bit annoyed with all the little bits and pieces, and ended up leaving it on some of the shells.

Due to not needing the dyed egg shells right away, they ended up staying in the dye for about a week and a half, getting more vibrant every day. By that time, the egg dye was starting to go a bit iffy but even the parts with some of the skin intact were now dyed properly.

So if you have the time to leave the egg shells to soak in the dye for a while, you should be fine either way 😉 }

 

How it worked for us:

I set out a plate with the dyed egg shells {and a little pile of multicolored egg shells at the center that I didn’t have the patience to sort after a mishap 😉 } and a sheet of contact paper, and let E loose on it.

 

She started out carefully choosing bits of egg shell and putting them down on the contact paper,

 

crushing bigger pieces to have them stick to the contact paper better {or maybe just because it felt interesting under her fingers 😉 }.

 

Pretty soon she decided that dumping handfuls on the sticky paper was the way to go,

 

grabbing more,

 

and spreading them around the table.

 

When she was satisfied with her work, she started exploring the contact paper, pulling it up off the table

 

and taping it back down.

 

E announced she was finished,

 

and displayed her collage proudly after I stuck on the second sheet of contact paper.

 

We hung it on the window but I was unable to get a nice picture, so here’s the finished product on top of a white table:

 

I love how vibrant the colors are!

 

What I learned:

• You need to be really careful when sticking on that second sheet of contact paper, especially if the egg shells were dumped on the paper. Egg shells have sharp points, and pushing down on them can really hurt if the former inside of the egg is pointing up and it has nowhere to go but into your finger. This was NOT a problem for E {because the egg shells just moved around on the contact paper} but I did get hurt a few times trying to get it all smoothed out.
• If you end up with multiple layers of egg shells {and you’re pretty much guaranteed to}, the contact paper won’t stick to itself very well. It still did a good job of holding the egg shell collage in place for us, even though there are some air pockets.

 

Additional suggestions:

• Glue down egg shells on paper.
• Draw an egg or other shape to fill in with egg shells.
• Leave egg shells plain for a different effect.

 

Have you tried this? Did you remove the white skin? Let me know in the comments!

 

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