How to Make Hanging Eggs for your Egg Tree

One of our Easter traditions every year is to make an egg tree to display the eggs we create each year and also eggs we have created in the past.

To make an egg tree you need to find a branch you like. If it is a fresh cut you can put it in a jar of water and try to force the leaves to emerge from within. Otherwise you can put your branch in a jar of dirt or pebbles to hold it in place. We were lucky this year and found a branch with an abandoned birds nest in it.

Here is a close up of our branch with it's birds nest in it. There is also a sweet wooden egg in it, you can find out how we made the wooden eggs HERE.

The first step in making an egg to hang on our egg tree is to blow out an egg.

If you blow your egg out before decorating it, you may have a hard time keeping it below the dye surface (when they are hollow they float).  You will need to secure them in place with a spoon or other object to keep your egg beneath the surface of the dye. I did see a neat idea on  THIS blog which might work well using a whisk but have never tried it myself.

I have made many of these eggs and usually blow my eggs out after they are decorated as they stay under the dye surface therefore making the dying process easier. However if you blow the egg out after you decorate them you have to be extra careful not to break your little ones masterpiece they just created. You may want to practice on a plain egg...or two.

To start you need ROOM TEMPERATURE eggs. This is very important. Cold eggs are much harder to blow out their contents and you are more likely to break your egg.

You can either bend out the metal egg lifter that came in the dye pack like I did below or use a thick needle. Poke a small hole in the top of the egg and a little bit larger hole in the bottom of the egg. Poke the egg while holding it gently but firmly to not crush it and then blow the egg into a container for scrambled eggs later.

I had the girls try blowing out plain eggs to practice on as I couldn't take pictures of myself blowing out the eggs and I didn't want them to crack their finished eggs by mistake. Blow through the top smaller hole and it will push the egg out through the bottom larger hole.

Sierra wasn't impressed with this job 

Once your eggs are blown out wipe them off with a wet cloth to get off any bits of egg and stand in an egg carton to dry off completely.

If your egg is plain...go decorate it and come back to see how to hang it.

If you want to hang your decorated eggs on an egg tree it is really quite simple.

You will need:

-Your blown out egg
-Floss or string to hang
-Ribbon (and scissors to cut it)
-Toothpick

First tie a piece of floss to half of a tooth pick and secure the open ends of floss with a knot.

Next carefully poke the toothpick through the top hole. You may need to enlarge the hole slightly so the knot can fit through the opening. Also if it is almost the right size and just tight you can use another tooth pick to push down the knot carefully through the hole. Please be careful to not break your egg or to push the tooth pick off of the string. In the picture below it was a tight fit so I had to use another toothpick carefully pushing the knot through the hole (not shown).

When the piece of tooth pick is pushed all the way into the egg, it will hang horizontally inside the egg and will not be able to turn it'self to come back out of the small hole.

 To add on a bow, lay a piece of ribbon behind the floss and then fold in front and form the bow.

 Voilà! Your egg is ready to hang on your egg tree.

We have a nice collection of eggs on our tree this year. You can see our DIY for the Littlest Pet Shop eggs HERE.

Do you make Easter Eggs? How do you display them?