Tuesday 14 April 2015

Papier Mache Easter eggs

Easter eggs are fabulous - everyone knows that.Sadly, like most things that are delicious and make you happy, they are bad for you. At the moment, I would rather be sad and average than happy and fat, but temptation is everywhere. To compensate for my depression I turned to decorating, because crafting makes me almost as happy as chocolate (no, not really, but it's quite a close second) I decided to make something big, pointless and cheerful. Thus, the giant eggs were born.


I started by papier macheing a balloon, using a newspaper strips soaked in a paste made of flour and water. To make the paste you just mix flour with water until you get to the consistency of yoghurt, and it stops being lumpy.

Tear up the newspaper into strips, and then dump them all into the bowl of paste. You should probably use a bigger bow - I switched to a huge one directly after an unfortunate incident with my carpet and the paste.

Leave them to soak while you wrestle your balloon into some sort of semblance of an egg, and try to get it to stand upright.


Take the strips of newspaper, and begin to smooth them onto the balloon. 


When the entire balloon is covered, leave it to dry overnight. Make sure it's somewhere warm, or the balloon will slowly deflate, and go as soggy and wrinkly as your crushed hopes and dreams. When it's dry you can add another layer to make it stronger if you like. I didn't for the smaller ones because I couldn't be bothered didn't think it was necessary


Now, not that I'm encouraging branding or any of that stuff, but there are certain things that can't be replaced with Tesco own brand. Hellmans mayonnaise is one of them, but for chocolate there are many. I made the giant creme egg by using tissue paper for the purple and red, and yellow paper for the (you guessed it) yellow bit.


For you non branders out there, you could just paint them pretty colours if you fancy to. Like me.


This one is meant to be a mini egg, but I don't really know what went wrong here. Basically, I hate water colours of any description. Or they hate me.


By the way, vinegar does  work to get paint stains out of your carpet, but only if you dilute it, other wise it presents a whole new carpet cleaning adventure. Just saying, in case you make a mistake during this project. Because mistakes can be fixed, and it really isn't the end of the world.


(My parents were not happy at the state of my carpet. I can condense the lecture into 'you didn't pay for the carpet, we did', if you want to take notes.)



The Kinder egg is, as you might have already noticed, fairly personal to me, that being my surname and all. (Kinder, not egg. That would just be silly.) This one was just painted, but I'm afraid that someone stepped on it or something while I wasn't watching, so the back is slightly less 3D than it once was. Ah well, it fits nicely on my desk, and looks very good until you pick it up.


I should probably have ignored my own advice (I usually do) and done two layers, but never mind.


Although my mother is getting slightly anxious at the prospect of having to help me manoeuvre these into the attic once the Easter season is up (and it's only up when summer arrives, in case you're wondering), I was very pleased with these over all. They give me a little spark of joy in the corner of my heart previously reserved for sweet things, which, after all, was their main intention. Not to give mum an aneurysm.
Until next time
x

3 comments:

  1. Great post. They look great and there are so many variations that could be made. If you had a lot of land and you had a lot of those eggs then it would make for an epic egg hunt! Another great post :)

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    1. Thank you :) it's funny that you should say that, actually, because I do have a large garden, and I had a huge Easter hunt this year. But with normal eggs, sadly. x

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    2. Oh, that is funny. Maybe it would be a good idea for next year. Now you have a whole year to make a huge number of these eggs. What your neighbours will think of you running around with giant baskets and looking for giant eggs is a different story! :)

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