Marbled Indigo Easter Eggs

Happy Crafty Monday!

The easter eggs from my previous post were all eggs I had decorated last year, but I when I wanted a few more eggs for my easter tree I decided to try out a new technique: marbling with nail polish and water.

My inspiration were these stunning eggs from Alice & Lois that I spotted on Pinterest. They have a full tutorial and lovely process photos on their page, which I recommend checking out. The nuts and bolts are that you drip nail polish into a container of water, swirl it around, and then dip the egg into the polish.

I tried two different techniques. If you have eggs you don’t want to eat (I had a few really old eggs) then you can simply drop them into the bin of water raw, and they will sink. Then you blow them out after and discard the egg. The other technique I employed involved blowing out the eggs first, so you can eat the liquid egg. Then I created a sort of egg dipping handle, using a bent paperclip. I had a small bend at one end, and then after sliding the hollow egg onto the paperclip I bent the long end up in the opposite direction to serve as a handle. I could then hold onto the long end and use it to dip the egg down through the nail polish without the hollow egg floating.

My first attempts were cool, but had limited marbling and few white areas. I think my problem was too much polish, but also too small a surface area of water. So I tried again with a larger container and while I was able to get more white areas, I was also really struggling with the nail polish forming a film too quickly and then not sticking properly to my eggs. Though I have to say I ended up with some pretty cool finished products, I don’t know if I’d call it ‘marbled’ per se. (See image to left.) I had been using room temperature water like the Alice & Lois tutorial recommended, but with some further research it sounds like hot water might have been better, it might have slowed the polish hardening.

After the eggs had dried, I strung them with ribbon to complete the look. When I was blowing the eggs out I made sure to create large holes at both the bottom and the top of the egg, since I knew I was going to be using ribbon. I then used a tapestry needle to thread the ribbon through the egg. For these eggs I threaded the ribbon through the egg from the bottom, and then back down from the top leaving a loop out the top. Then I double knotted the ribbon at the bottom of the egg, and trimmed the ends at an angle.

I also had one egg that I had soaked in some red cabbage juice to get a subtle blue tint, and then I dipped it in the polish leftovers after dipping another egg. So the coloring of the final egg was a more subtle blue on blue than the other eggs, but I think it is also really pretty.  Here you can see the different sides, it was harder to capture this egg in photos than the others, for some reason.

All in all, I’m pretty excited with how these turned out, though I also feel like I have a lot still to learn about this technique. But, the wheels in my head are already spinning with other items I can decorate with some marbled nail polish. I’d love to hear if you have tried this technique and how it worked for you.

Ciao for now, Allison