Painted Plastic Eggs

Ok, it’s official.  My paint addiction knows no limits.  I started painting (my daughters) plastic Easter eggs last year.  I made a topiary and an egg wreath, which I will show you over the next few days.  This year, I have a few new projects that used these painted eggs, so I wanted to have a little tutorial on them first.

I needed so many of them (last year) that I would have needed a shopping cart full of the paper mache ones, and real ones are just out of the question.  (I am a germaphobe when it comes to raw meat/eggs so there is no way I would risk salmonella for Easter decor.) So I used the generic plastic Easter eggs (the kind you fill).  Bonus: they are super cheap (40 cents a bag at Hobby Lobby and they have three different sizes) and they don’t break when kids play with them!

After some trial and error, there are two ways I would recommend doing this.  If you plan on using acrylic craft paint, then prime them first.  I used cheap-o  Wal-Mart gray spray primer ($1 per can).  I like to paint them in those giant Rubbermaid containers because the paint doesn’t stick, you can easily roll them around without getting your hands covered, and the overspray stays in the box (which wastes less and doesn’t make as much of a mess).  Let them dry and then add the acrylic base coat.  (The brown ones were done this way, I used Anita’s acrylic in Cafe mixed with a little cream for the base)

OR you can skip the primer and use latex instead.  I mixed a couple of colors I had in the garage and came up with this pretty Robin’s egg blue color. (Baby blue, a small amount of a mossy green and a teeny bit of a nutmeg brown).  It took two coats to get really good coverage.

After the base coat was totally dry (with either acrylic or latex) I used three different colors on top along with the base.  Taupe (Americana Mississippi Mud is the perfect shade) Cream (Americana Light Buttermilk), and a tiny bit of burnt umber (Anita’s)

I put each on a lid or bowl, and used a sponge brush.  I would dip into a color (lightly) and randomly sponge over the egg.  While the first color was still wet, I would do the other two.  I only used the burnt umber to darken the shades, not as an accent color.

The good thing about doing it this way is that it stays wet so you can easily wipe it off if you don’t like the way it looks.

I stuck them all back in the plastic containers to dry and then splattered them with burnt umber (that was really watered down).  I used a one inch paint brush, but a toothbrush works much better to give you the perfect small speckles.

I would shake the box around and do it again to make sure the other sides were covered.  Have a paper towel handy to wipe off any large splatters.

I can’t wait to show you the six different projects I have made with these.

I also have them in bowls,  jars and nests all over the house.

These are in a vintage glass bowl on an antique tea cart.

These are on the kitchen counter under a cheese dome. (Ha!  If you look really closely these have holes in them, they were the first batch…from the Dollar Tree…don’t get this kind :))

In fact, if you look super close at any of them, you will see the seam.  But they survived a group of Hannah’s little friends last week :)

What do you think?