There is a chinese restaurant I ate at about 5 months ago (we ordered Flaming Pu - kids loved it!) which had the typical paintings of fishermen with triangular hats in small boats on a tropical waterway. However, I noticed the water in the painting had an unusual appearance. On closer inspection, I realized the painting was over the top of broken up egg shells. Ah ha! Another cheap art material, very beautifully used.
And so, think of this as a recycling option: cook your eggs, but keep the shells and the egg cartons. Less landfill, more art materials. The egg shells should be washed and put out to dry. When dry the egg shells can be used for a whole range of projects, either crushed up, or with just a small hole at the top.
The least mess way to crush up egg shells is to place the dried egg shells into a ziplock bag (or paper bag!) and crush. Of course, don't even think of depriving your child of this fun activity! Your options for the crushed egg shells are to put glue on whatever paper/board/canvas you are using and then place (or for kids, sprinkle) the egg shells ontop. You could draw the picture out before hand (saving the egg shells for one particular area (eg the water etc) or you could paint the entire picture onto the crushed egg shells. It could be a mosaic of sorts, or even just a sensory event with no particular finished product in mind.
If you have kids that are older, you can poke a small hole in the top of the egg and drain the contents out for breakfast, allow the egg to dry, and then paint directly onto the whole dried egg shell. For stability, get some plasticine or clay and make a ring the egg can sit on. Any acrylic/craft paints should be fairly permanent. Another option is to decopage the egg with tissue paper and clear glue or varnish over the top. Make your own Faberge eggs!
This website has a really neat picture of regular eggs changing into painted eggs (exquisite artwork)! Click on through to the website after you have watched this and there is a plethora of differently painted dried egg shells. Click on egg gallery then scroll down to chicken egg gallery 1 to see the Ukrainian artwork by British Columbia artist Gloria Olynyk. This photo is courtesy of her website ukrainianegg.com.
Want to see some more examples of egg art? Try eggsamples from International Egg Art. Once again this is an example of beautiful paintings on unusual canvases! Some of the ideas here are: beaded, decoupage, diarama, engraved, hinged, jewelled, lamps, painted, sculpted and pysanky (dyed with wax drawings). Enchanted Hen Productions (neat website name!) has a huge selection of Pysanky egg art you can view.
If the egg cartons are the cardboard sort they can be saved up, and then when needed, soaked overnight and used the next day for paper mache. The beauty of using these egg cartons as paper mache is that they do not need glue - they use it to make the boxes stay in the right shape in the first place! Once your paper mache creation has dried it can be painted.
What are some other options for those egg cartons? Here's one I liked: a gift box - wrap the carton in pretty paper and put straw or coconut inside and place home baked chocolates, or other edible inside. This would work for both the cardboard or the foam types.
So, who's ready for some scrambled eggs?
Aussie Kim
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