Happy Easter! Crafting Silhouette Eggs

Silhouette image Easter eggs.

Wishing you & yours a very happy Easter Sunday! Last Easter I posted photos of some of the silhouette eggs I have created over the years. If unbroken these eggs will last indefinitely, but 20+ years of mischievous cats and accidents have taken their toll, so this year found me once again cutting paper silhouettes and saving onion skins.

I originally read about making these eggs in a Country Living magazine article written by Wendy Schultz Wubbels that appeared in the April 1997, Vol. 20 Issue 4, on page148. If you happen to have a stash of old Country Living magazines go dig out this issue! If you don’t, I’ll give you the basic steps for making these amazing eggs:

gather your materials…

Gather Your Materials: First and foremost save the skin from every onion you use! You need a LOT of onion skins to dye these eggs… I needed to come up with a lot of onion skins in a hurry, so I resorted to peeling 6 lbs. of onions! After carefully peeling and saving every bit of onion skin I made a huge pot of French Onion Soup. 🙂

You’ll also need white eggs, an old pair of panty hose, some twist ties, vinegar, white copy paper, small sharp scissors, copy right free silhouette images or your own hand drawn silhouettes, and a large pot.

onions!

French onion soup.

Cut Out Your Paper Silhouettes

Trace or use a copier to transfer your desired silhouette images to plain white paper. I usually use copier paper because I find it to be a good weight to work with and I always have it at hand. Carefully cut out your silhouettes with a small pair of sharp scissors. I generally cut one or two extra silhouettes just in case I have any issues when I place them on the boiled eggs.

Boil Eggs & Steep Onion Skins

Gently boil clean, raw white eggs for at least 30 minutes. You want to get the interiors very hard boiled because the idea is to dry up the inside of the egg as much as possible. While the eggs are boiling place your onion skins in a large pot of water and add a generous splash of white vinegar, simmer on low until you get the color intensity you desire. I like to make my dye bath really dark because I use it to dye multiple batches of eggs. As the pigment leeches out of the dye bath, successive dye lots will get lighter and lighter. You may place the onion skins directly in the pot, or if you prefer to keep things a bit more contained like I do, put the onion skins in the mesh bags that your onions came in, with a twist tie to close the opening.

Mount Paper Silhouettes on Boiled Eggs

boiled eggs and cut out silhouettes…

Cut an old pair of panty hose into approximately 4 inch squares. Let your boiled eggs cool enough so that you can handle them easily. Fill a small bowl with water. Dip one paper silhouette in water and immediately position it on an egg. Gently smooth the paper with your finger so that all the edges are down and the entire surface of the paper is affixed to the egg. Place the egg in the middle of a square of pantyhose, silhouette side down, gather up the edges and pull the hose tight, twist tie edges together at the back of the egg.

mount silhouette on egg

mount silhouette on egg

mount silhouette on egg

mount silhouette on egg

Dye Eggs

Gently lower eggs into dye bath and simmer on very low heat until the eggs are dyed to your preferred intensity. Remove eggs from pot and place on white paper toweling. Let cool and drain a bit. Remove twist ties and hose, then carefully peel off the paper silhouette. Let air dry. Display!

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  remove from dye bath & drain on paper towling

  

  carefully peel away paper

  Because I needed to have some eggs that are both cat and toddler proof I also dyed some white plastic eggs that I purchased from Walmart. The only changes I made to the directions above is that I did not have to boil the eggs and I soaked the eggs in a lukewarm dye bath for 24 hours. The dye does not take as well on plastic, so the eggs are lighter and wound up being “brown paper bag” colored. (which I like) 🙂

Cat & Child friendly dyed plastic silhouette eggs ❤

See more of my silhouette eggs in previous posts:

https://paulawalton.wordpress.com/2017/04/15/easter-greetings/

Wishing You Easter Joy!

Wishing You a Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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