Baby Talk - 3/30/17

So get in on the fun with your little ones. Here are a few tips for adding your creative touch to egg dyeing.

• Fabric glue – Dye the egg a light color and let it dry completely. Create a design on the egg using fabric glue – stripes, dots, wavy lines, let your creative juices flow! Now put the egg in a darker shade of dye. Let the egg dry and then remove the glue, peeling very carefully.

• String – Dye the egg a light color. After it is dry, wrap the egg in string. Use your artistic eye to determine if the egg will be wrapped completely, just in certain sections, loosely in some sections and tighter in others…experiment with different approaches. Now dye the egg in a darker shade. Once the egg and string are completely dry, carefully remove the string.

• Fabric paint – After dyeing the egg and letting it dry, use various colors of fabric paint to create a design on the colored egg – lines, dots, patterns to suit your liking!

• Watercolor paint – Skip the dye altogether and be creative with watercolor. Wet the egg lightly and use a paintbrush to apply paint. The goal is to have the colors bleed slightly on the wet surface. To enhance the spreading of the color, lightly brush on a little more water.

• Dyeing technique – To create an egg with sections of different colors, submerge a portion of the egg for a few seconds in one color of dye. Once the egg is dry, submerge another portion of the egg in a different color of dye. You can even overlap colors on portions of the egg and, if you want, leave parts of the shell without dye.

• Advanced dyeing technique – Dye the egg in a light shade and let it dry. In a shallow bowl, place a darker dye mixed with one tablespoon of vegetable oil (any light colored oil will do). You should see swirls appearing on the surface of the dye. Roll your egg in the dye-oil mixture for a few seconds. You now have beautiful marble eggs!

Have fun creating masterpieces!

What other egg dyeing techniques have you used? Please, share.