Because you don’t need a chicken–or a bunny!–to lay the cutest Easter eggs in your basket!
Was the original mythos that the Easter Bunny laid the eggs for Easter, or did chickens lay them and the Easter Bunny decorates them? Or only delivers them, along with the basket of treats? Our Easter Bunny didn’t handle eggs at all, just the basket of treats, BUT the treats only came after a multi-stage clue hunt that allowed the kids to pre-run off some of their early morning sugar energy while their father and I dozed in bed and listened to them argue over clues and thud around inside and outside and, one memorable morning, crack a whole carton of eggs because the clue told them their next clue was hidden inside a special egg in the refrigerator.
Yeah, the “special egg” was a big colorful plastic Easter egg set front and center, around which the five- and seven-year-old had to reach to fetch the real egg carton. Clue hunts are not without risk!
ANYWAY, there’s no risk of getting raw egg everywhere with THESE Easter eggs (unless you go just as off-script as a little kid hopped up on jellybeans), because they’re all artificial! You’re going to love the eco-friendly materials used to make all the Easter eggs featured below, and you’re going to love how beautiful and creative each one is. So pick your favorite and start crafting!
Chalkboard Easter Egg
One year when my kids were pretty little, they could NOT get enough of decorating Easter eggs! Instead of hard-boiling a dozen eggs a day, I painted a few of our wooden eggs with chalkboard paint, gave the kids some artist’s-quality chalks (the secret is to look for chalk pastels, but don’t accidentally buy oil pastels instead!), and set them free to decorate their eggs over and over and over again.
Embossed and Glittered Egg
Full disclosure: this project isn’t fully eco-friendly, because neither the hot glue nor the glitter are good for the environment. But you can fix it! Instead of hot glue, use yarn dipped into white glue. Skip the glitter altogether, or sub with a biodegradable version.
Embroidered Felt Eggs with a Pocket for Treats
Three pieces of felt and some embroidery floss are all the materials you need to create these colorful eggs that hold treats just as well as their plastic cousins. Honestly, I think these hold treats even better–you could never stick a whole entire Matchbox car in a plastic egg!
Fabric Scrap Egg Softie
The scrappy nature of this sewn egg makes it look so Eastery! It’s a big bonus that it’s soft, which means that it can handle the occasional launch from a small hand.
Felted Wool Eggs
These eggs are such a fun sensory experience compared to the typical texture of Easter eggs. That alone makes them special, but with lots of care, you can make them even more special by felting beautiful embellishments and nature scenes right onto them.
Hand-painted Eggs
I used wooden eggs for this particular project, but you can work this trick with any egg that has a paintable surface–including chicken eggs! Cardboard and papier-mache eggs don’t have the smoothest surface, so you might have to adjust your techniques a bit for those, but plaster of Paris eggs take paint like a champ.
Papier-Mache Eggs
My favorite thing about papier-mache Easter eggs is that they can hold treats just like a plastic egg. Mine are all boring chicken eggs, but with some egg-stra creativity, you can even sculpt fun embellishments onto your egg. This year, I want to make one with tentacles!
Sugar Eggs
These eggs are a LOT of work, but they’re so beautifully detailed that they’re worth it. Why dunk a hard-boiled egg into food coloring when you could instead be making this masterpiece?
Tissue Paper Decoupaged Eggs
Tissue paper decoupage gives an almost watercolor effect to an object, which is really fun for Easter eggs. It’s a bit fiddly for a kid craft, but at the same time very forgiving and very process-oriented, so it’s also a terrific kid craft!
Treat-filled Paper Easter Eggs
I created this project as part of a care package for those former refrigerator gremlins. This paper version works just as well as plastic eggs in terms of candy-holding, and they’re a LOT more mailable!
Woodburned and/or Watercolored Eggs
By now, you know I LOVE wooden eggs for Easter decorating, and one of the main reasons is they’re so versatile. They look really cool woodburned, and they look really cool painted with watercolors, and they look really, really, REALLY cool when you do both!
Yarn-Wrapped Eggs
Got yarn scraps? This is a cute and colorful way to use them up! You can use any egg form for this project. I really like upcycling plastic eggs that are slightly damaged, or other artificial eggs that are a bit unsightly, for this.
P.S. Want even more ideas for eco-friendly artificial Easter eggs? Here you go!
