Easter Eggs!

Alrighty. I'm going to attempt to give y'all a tutorial?

Yeah, I'm not so sure.

But, here goes.

So everyone who is stalking pinterest and loving holiday crafts as much as myself, has probably seen a dozen of these wrapped yarn/thread/rope/lace Easter eggs. I decided to try it myself, thinking it'd be so fun to do with the kiddos. Right? I mean, messy liquid starch and yards and yards of yarn to play with in the messy liquid starch? Yeah, totally makes sense.

Not so much.

My generous husband offered to help me with this project, and thank the good Lord he did because I would have had a mental break down. Yeah, I'm sensitive. 

I used one cup of Sta-Flo liquid starch, found at my friendly local Wal-Mart, plus a half cup of flour. I honestly think it'd be fine without the flour, but it seemed to give the liquid more of a thickness. I'll come back to this.

My husband unraveled the yarn and placed, foot by foot, a round of yarn into my bowl of starch/flour. I had a water balloon, blown up and not fully expanded (and tied off, obviously), in one hand...ready to go. Now, the technique will differ with each person. I somehow managed to hold the balloon in my left hand, plus hold the end of the yarn in my left fingers to use my right hand to siphon off the excess mixture from my yarn to then attempt to wrap the balloon using both hands. That yarn was pretty darn slippery on the balloon. It was an interesting first few wraps...on each balloon. 

Anyways. 

You just keeps wrapping, in all sorts of different directions and areas of the balloon, making sure that you don't forget to put your yarn in the starch.flour mixture. Yeah, I kept going. Without dipping. Thank God my husband was there. 

Wrap until you feel the egg has enough girth. I had my husband cut off the yarn and then I just slid the end under a few of the wraps. Ideally, the balloons should be hung up on a rope/ribbon/wire/whatever with some sort of clip on the tie so that the eggs can drip/air-dry. Did I do that? 

Nope. I set them in plastic cups overnight.

 The next morning when I checked, the tops were stiff and dry. Everywhere else, pretty much freshly dipped. So I turned them upside down. Did that work? Nope. So I sat down, with my heat gun (aka my good ol' hair dryer) and individually blow dried each balloon. It took for-ev-er.

The pink/orange/yellow egg was my favorite, at that time, so it dried first. I pinched a hole in the balloon with my scissors and watched the balloon deflate, cracking and dropping starch/flour dandruff everywhere. It was an interesting experience. 

I think I'll come back to the whole using a mix of starch and flour here. Although the flour gave the mixture a thickness and whatnot, it also gave it clumps. If you think you may want to try this mixture, I'd suggest pouring the starch into the bowl, then sifting the flour over it. Live and learn, yeah?

That string was being really stubborn. So I pulled it out and cut it off. I wasn't taking any crap from anything.

Excuse my sink. and crappy lighting. I found the smallest holes, that I could still fit my ribbon through, and just strung the eggs that way. One of the many tutorials that I read had used thinner, colored string and then hot glued it all together. I like the whole "not being glued to each other" thing because then I can rearrange the eggs, depending on what they're hanging on.

The purple/yellow/white is my favorite now. :]