Transform plastic dollar store eggs into gorgeous hand-painted Easter eggs with acrylic paint and a little creativity. Fun and easy craft for kids of all ages, but crafty adults will love it too! Display them in a vase or basket, or decorate your Easter dinner table with them this year.
Guys!! I am SO excited to share our latest Easter Egg Craft with you! (You can check out ALL of our easy Easter crafts here).
We painted plastic eggs – yep, those colourful, plastic dollar store eggs – to look like real hand-painted Easter eggs!
Yes! You can paint dollar store plastic eggs!
Who knew you could even paint plastic eggs? The thought had never occurred to me until recently, when we made these painted beach stone Easter eggs.
We had so much fun decorating our rocks that it made me wonder what else we could transform into Easter eggs.
That’s when the obvious jumped out at me. We always have a bunch of plastic eggs stashed away for our Easter activities, and I thought why not try painting those?
Update: We’ve made 2 more painted egg projects: these Plastic Egg Reindeer Ornaments and these ornate European Egg Christmas Ornaments.
Oh my gosh! I’m so glad we did!
They turned out gorgeous, and the kids loved the creative process. This is such a great way to decorate eggs without using real eggs! And hello…. inexpensive. I mean, who doesn’t have a ton of these cheap plastic eggs kicking around?!
To paint your plastic eggs, all you need is…
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Supplies:
- plastic Easter eggs
- Gesso surface prep
- acrylic craft paints
- acrylic craft sealer/varnish
- paint brushes
- wooden skewers
We painted most of our eggs in soft, pastel colours and decorated them with squiggles, dots and zigzags.
A few others, we painted in bold, bright colours and dabbed them with a sponge brush dipped in a contrasting colour.
Both methods produced beautiful results.
How to Paint Plastic Easter Eggs
- Skewer your egg
Before you begin painting, push a wooden skewer into one of the holes in the egg. This will prevent you from having to touch your egg when you’re painting it, and it will allow you to stand your eggs up in a vase while they dry.
- Prime your egg
Give your egg a coat of Gesso (primer) to ensure the paint will stick to the plastic. Allow to dry before painting and decorating your egg. A hairdryer is handy if you want to speed things up.
- Base coat your egg
With a paintbrush, apply a layer of acrylic craft paint. If your egg requires 2 coats, allow the first coat to dry before applying the second.
- Decorate your egg
With a fine liner brush, decorate your egg with squiggles and zigzags. For perfectly round dots, use the handle end of a paintbrush dipped in paint. Place the skewered egg in a vase or tall container and allow to dry before varnishing (the hair dryer can help here too).
- Varnish your egg
When your egg is completely dry, brush on a coat of craft varnish to add a glossy sheen to your egg and to protect the paint from chipping and scratching.
To display your eggs, you can leave them on the skewers and arrange them in a vase, or remove the skewers and arrange in a basket, a homemade nest (you can make our paper bag nest), or in a clean, empty egg carton.
More Easter Crafts for Kids
Creative, One-of-a-Kind Ways to Dye Eggs
Fabulous Easter Egg Crafts for Toddlers to Tweens
10 Easy Easter Crafts for Toddlers & Preschoolers
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Jackie is a mom, wife, home daycare provider, and the creative spirit behind Happy Hooligans. She specializes in kids’ crafts and activities, easy recipes, and parenting. She began blogging in 2011, and today, Happy Hooligans inspires more than 2 million parents, caregivers and Early Years Professionals all over the globe.
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