1. First prepare your eggs

 Either by piercing the egg both top and bottom with a darning needle or similarly blunt but pointed object. Then, by blowing the contents of the egg out of the larger hole at the bottom.

This is quite tiring and should only be attempted by an adult (see warning below).

Or by firmly breaking the egg open and discarding the contents (they could make a lovely Simnel cake).The two halves will need to be reassembled before proceeding.

Another alternative is to use a commercial egg blower, which we are hoping to be able to offer on the hopefish site by next Easter. But for now you could use the search term Pysanky.

Then, rinse out the emptied egg shells and leave to dry.

2. Cover the eggs with papier mâché

Using a paintbrush, coat the shells with PVA children's glue and lay strips of tissue paper on top. Seal with more PVA glue. (It would be easier to do this in stages, allowing the glue to dry between coating different parts of the egg.)

3. Now you can decorate your eggs 

Using bright paints you can decorate your eggs with all sorts of designs: stripes, spots, flowers, rabbits, chicks. The sky is the limit!

NB An adult should help with stage one and caution should be taken to avoid ingesting raw egg if the eggs are not known to be Salmonella free.