Good Friday.

Last weekend I house-sat for Rachel, and worked on eggs. I didn’t really get much done, except for a single egg with a face on it, now named “Lovely Olivia.”

The latest Martha Stewart had some beautiful marbleized eggs on the cover that I had to try out. Martha recommended food coloring for the initial dye bath, which I didn’t do because I know from experience how weak food coloring dyes are. Instead I tried out a packet of the German dye papers I ordered from Great Britain (HomeCrafts) last year.

WOW!!!! The German dyes are wonderful – every bit as good as the no-longer-available Mickey Mouse neon dyes. They have the same eye-popping color, the same wonderful coverage, and the same water-spotting issues, which can be a flaw or a blessing depending on the design. Next week I need to order ten more packets of this stuff.

(later) The German dye colors, while incredible, were too strong – there just wasn’t enough contrast between the colors to make marbling effective. I marbled a few, but was not happy with the results.

I also bought the messiest dye kit known to man, the Swirl-An-Egg kit. This one is truly dangerous. The dyes contain oil (so they can float on the water) and a sticky resin to help the dye stick to the eggs. I made the kit work properly, which is a first for me. Ultimately the eggs were a disappointment, though. The resin is just awful. I washed the eggs three times in dishwashing soap and water, and the resin wouldn’t come off. The eggs were still incredibly sticky 48 hours later, so I decided to throw away all but the least sticky one, “Theft of the Cameo.” (How Victorian!)

Today Charlotte bought the kids over to dye eggs. We did a few of the Dudley Spin-An-Egg (always a favorite) and then tried our hand at Eggs a lá Martha again. This time we used food coloring, but the results still weren’t what I had hoped to see. There just wasn’t enough contrast. Charlotte and I decided to pump it up by using two PAAS or Dudley tablets for the second bath, so the swirls were in a more intense color. We also cut down dramatically on the amount of cooking oil Martha recommends, as we were marbleizing in measuring cups instead of bowls. (Less surface area = less oil.) I think we used no more than ½ a teaspoon. I’m very pleased with the results. The eggs are everything I hoped, fully equal to the eggs on the cover of Living.

Later, after Mom took the kids to Toys R Us, Charlotte and I played with Pearl-Ex pigments suspended in acrylic varnish. The pigments are a nice finishing touch. I tried using them as an intermediate step on top of waxed areas, but it doesn’t work. When I try to melt the wax it stays under the acrylic. I’ve ruined one egg playing with the process, and have one more to ruin later.

We also played with the children and the Blo-Pens Easter Egg sets I bought on closeout. It’s something of a disappointment. The food-safe dyes included with the kit are too watered-down. They run everywhere; it’s just impossible to get that Blo-Pen airbrushed effect. We started using my Fabric Blo-Pens instead, and had much better luck, although we couldn’t use them on the children’s hard-boiled eggs. The set has some nice stencils with it, including some circular ones designed to fit around the eggs. Those were fun, and I plan to use them with the Fabric Blo-Pens in the future.

I also played a little with the fabric markers I picked up when the JoAnn fabric store in Irving was closing and everything was 80% off. I tried to doodle on one egg and was not pleased with the results. The lines aren’t as thick as the wax lines I’m used to, and they just didn’t look right. I tried to fill in a large area on another egg (my Van-Gogh inspired “Starry Egg”) but since I haven’t finished the egg the jury is still out.