When I was a child we use to make egg shell Christmas ornaments for the tree. Does anyone remember these?
They were super easy to make. But the worst part was blowing the inside of the egg out, YUCK!!!!!
Making egg shell Christmas ornaments
An adult, usually Mama, would give us all an egg. It was raw, of course, we would have to be outside for the first part of this project.
We would take a small nail, and very carefully punch a hole in the top and bottom of the egg.
Then we would gently press our puckered lips against the top of egg with the hole in it. We would then blow really hard into the hole.
Usually, it would take us at least three good blows to push the yolk and white out of the other hole at the bottom of egg shell.
Once we had that done, we could go back inside and decorate the outside of egg with paint or glitter.
Just whatever we wanted to do with it was fine. We would use thread inserted in the hole to hang our ornaments.
* Image courtesy of 123rf
I don’t think I could trust the kids I babysit quite yet with eggs or anything that could make eggshells outside of the kitchen area. However, when some of them are a bit older, we’ll definitely try this.
Or you could empty the eggs yourself (with or without them watching!) and just let the kids decorate the shells, sorrowscal.
If the shells can outlast curious little hands trying to break them, then I’ll give it a try. But, we’ll go with this from oldest to youngest and see how we fair.
I wonder how messy this actually gets. but i bet the kids would really enjoy blowing out the yoke part of it, I would too honestly. Whats cool is I have never seen these on any Christmas tree so i thought it would be really cool to try and be the first to have to my tree! This seems like a great idea for a church group also, just a little messy, but very fun.
From memory, Daniel, it is less messy than you think – obviously you do it over a bowl or such, but it comes out fairly neatly. But it is a long time since I did this at school when we learned about Greek Easter! I wonder if anyone uses the egg white and yolks to bake a cake or make an omelette!
I’ve never seen eggs on trees either so I think you wold be right in showing something different!
Oh! I tried this by the way! I didn’t manage to get all the way though. I had the egg in hand and was ready for everything but then couldn’t find something skinny enough to safely poke a hole into both sides of the egg. I’m going to try again when I get back from my Thanksgiving trip.
What a pity you struggled with this, sorrowscal. I think it was just a dressmaker’s pin we used – or even a sewing needle may do the trick. Alternatives could be a drawing pin or the pin of a brooch.
I don’t know if I have a brooch pen but I believe I have several hand-sewing needles lying around in need of some use. Thank you for the wonderful tip!
Any time sorrowscal 🙂
I am going to try this with my kids, but I think they are probably too young to be able to blow hard enough to get the egg out of the shell. I’ll just do that part before we get started!
have fun with it Ally. Sometimes, it is the preparation of craft (or even cooking!) with kids that takes longer than the craft itself!
I’ve never heard of this before about it sounds really interesting. What a creative and inexpensive way to make ornaments. It reminds me a bit of decorating eggs for Easter, the concept of these is so neat! I’ll really have to try this sometime 🙂
Good luck – I hope it works well for you 🙂
Has anyone tried using a syringe with a fine tip, like the ones that you use to refill printer cartridges? That would make it less messy!
it would be less messy – good idea! I wonder if the egg would be too thick to suck up through the needle though?
I always though of eggs for Easter, but never for Christmas. What a great idea! We put all sorts of shapes and ornaments on our tree, so why not eggs with Christmas décor! So easy and fun to do with the kids too.
I agree Juno – eggs are associated more with Easter but there’s nothing stopping us using them for Christmas, too!
I love the fact that I am reading about and thinking of what to decorate the house with for the upcoming holiday season, because that means that it is here. I am not sure I this is the case with everyone else, but this is really the indicator that it is the season, when the house starts to look like it. These looks like a nice addition, too.