You, Too, Can Make Hologram Easter Eggs
If you were the kind of kid who got pretty competitive during craft night, you know what a big deal a group craft like dying Easter eggs can be. Everything has to be exactly right, and just a shade more interesting than the other kids' eggs. And so, with Easter sneaking up on us and eggs as one of our major life components, the staff of Extra Crispy brainstormed about how to make an Easter egg with pizzazz. If we had unlimited funding and patience, we could have tried to make a Faberge knock-off. But what we had were YouTube videos, hard-boiled eggs, and a lot of holographic pigment powder.
You see, at some point, I had gotten it into my head that you could decorate Easter eggs using the same basic techniques you use with nail art. it kind of makes sense, right? Eggshells are like the fingernails of eggs. Presumably painting them with nail polish would allow you to do more complicated and interesting things! Also recently I was introduced to YouTuber Simply Nailogical, and her nail art designs combined with her undying love for all things that are holographic convinced me that the project we should do was to make holographic-iridescent Easter eggs. So together with our intrepid and extremely patient illustrator Lauren Kolm, we set out to paint eggs with nail polish and then buff holographic pigment into their shells.
Except that really didn't work. Eggshells are not actually as much like fingernails as I assumed. After many trial and error attempts resulting in kinda-shiny kinda-patchy mostly sad-looking Easter eggs, Lauren finally figure out a solution, one that you probably guessed a full paragraph ago. Don't use real eggs. Use fake plastic eggs and you can decorate them much more easily. So without further ado, here is how you hologram a (plastic) egg.
Step 1: Set Out Your Materials
You'll need plastic Easter eggs, some Scotch tape, a clear nail polish topcoat, and holographic pigment. You can also use a small brush, but we sound fingers worked to apply the pigment just as well.
Step 2: Section off the top of the egg with tape
Tape around the top of the egg to section off the area you're hologram-ing from the area you're leaving plain. That'll give you a nice clean line. If you wanted to get creative with it, you could even cut the tap to make stripes or use as a stencil of sorts.
Step 3: Paint the egg with clear nail polish
You want to give the egg a solid, even coating of polish so that the holographic pigment has something to adhere to. And next is the hardest part: wait. You want the top coat to be almost totally set before you put on the holographic pigment, otherwise it has a tendency to clump up and slide around and otherwise look a mess.
Step 4: Dab on the holographic pigment
Using your finger, gently dab on a thin later of the holographic pigment powder all over the egg. You don't want it to be too thick, or the pigment will clump up and you won't get that rainbow-iridescent-holographic sheen.
Step 5: Remove the tape and admire
You did it! Ooooooooooh so sparkly. Look at those beautiful eggs.
