The crafty booklet Kitchen Cupboard Handicrafts (1963, Quality Publications) is heavy on making creativity happen with things you have around the house. It’s deep on paper crafting. It was easy back then to have a stash of good quality construction paper, a jar of paste, leftover bits of rickrack, sequins, and snub-nosed scissors (for the beginning snippers) or nice pointy scissors which are much better for fine details. Add in some wiggle eyes and you have the essentials for a 1960s egg craft classic, the “Eggs for Easter” project.
You need blown egg shells to make these 1960s egg craft friends. Blowing eggs is pretty easy, but you have to be a little patient. It’s not difficult but it takes a gentle touch. All you need are cuticle scissors, a metal cake tester, something to blow the egg out and a recipe that calls for a few eggs. Better Homes and Gardens has a good egg blowing tutorial. Since you’re going to be eating what comes out of the eggs, wash all your tools and the eggs before you start. BH&G recommends a bulb syringe for actually blowing the eggs, not a bad idea in a pandemic. (As a second-generation eggist, I’ve always huffed and puffed and blowwwwwed the egg out but not this year.)
Once the eggs are empty, washed and dried, they are more durable than you would expect. A preschool class of about 20 managed to dye blown eggs with holes cut in the front, add cellophane grass and a chenille chick with zero eggs broken.
This may be a retro 1960s egg craft, but turning blown eggshells into characters is still fun no matter what your age. And it’s simpler now then in the 1960s because of things like glue guns, paint pens, glue sticks and pretty printed scrapbooking paper.
