This Easter, take hard-boiled eggs to new heights by embellishing them with lacy patterns.

Give little egg hunters a leg up with eggs that lend a shot of rowdy neon to a holiday otherwise characterized by polite pastels.

Adorn your eggs with playful creatures and fresh veggies by making stencils using a craft punch and adhesive vinyl. 

This brood is all smiles, er, beaks as they pose for a family portrait to welcome their latest addition. (The photo hanging behind them was taken before the new chick hatched.)

Combine various techniques -- bands, leaf garlands, and flowers -- to dress up plain and dyed eggs with crepe paper.

Three overlapping dots stenciled onto eggs beget a batch of new hues. The design pays homage to CMYK printing, which combines cyan, magenta, yellow, and "key" black to yield a spectrum.

Eggs covered in gold leaf add a striking touch to any Easter display.

Give egg-shaped boxes a natural touch with speckled paint, butterflies, and a rabbit cut from decorative paper.

These beautifully glittered Easter eggs are a sparkling alternative to coloring them with dyes.

Carl Faberge's dazzling bejeweled eggs were an Easter tradition for the last Russian czars, revealing a surprise inside for the lucky recipient. Make your own using a variety of beading, trim, and other baubles. 

In this example, we embellished hinged eggs with enamel paint and embossed gold papers. A fifth small egg stands alone on four gold beads glued to the base.

Learn More About Faberge Eggs

Inspired by an easy Japanese technique, we've created these delightful decorations to enjoy this Easter and next.

Grass appliques add a touch of nature to pretty pastel Easter eggs.

If the earth hatched from a giant egg, as the ancient Persians believed, it might have resembled one of these in our dreamy dozen. We used a simple dyeing technique to create the intricate swirls of color. Every Easter egg made this way is one of a kind.

These eggs were trimmed with gold cord and imitation pearls, suggesting Faberge-era luxury.

These insects are spinning a yarn about how they came to bee: quail eggs wrapped in bits of yarn make up the bees, while a larger chicken egg wrapped in yarn stands in for their hive.

A purple paper butterfly floats from a wire attached to a pearl glued inside the bottom of a plain white egg.

Make charming egg ornaments embellished with ribbon and trimmings.

Transfer patterns from silk ties onto Easter eggs using this unusual technique.

These adorable table decorations can double as place cards; write names on one side of each egg with a marker.

Coating Easter eggs with glitter provides a sparkling alternative to coloring them with dyes.

Eggs adorned with the delicate shapes of greenery and herbs announce the arrival of spring.

With stencils made of waterproof vinyl adhesive tape and cut-out shapes, you can create perfectly rendered patterns on your Easter eggs. Make plaid, polka-dotted, punctuated, or monogrammed eggs, or create your own designs.

These Easter eggs are filled with a delicious surprise -- dark chocolate.

Personalize your Easter eggs and turn them into ornaments with a wood bead and ribbon.

How now do you make a brown cow? With brown eggs, of course. An udderly adorable calf starts out as a speckled quail egg, and a pair of Holsteins get their spots from black paint.

Apply gold and silver leaf over blown eggs for an elegant touch. We decorated chukar and turkey eggs in lavender and champagne-pink silver leaf, and chicken, pullet, turkey, and goose eggs in varying shades of gold leaf. 

Gold leaves and gilding glue are available at Pearl Paint.

For thousands of years, Ukrainians have created elaborately patterned eggs called pysanky using a wax-resist process. Wax is applied to an egg, which is then dipped in colored dyes. When completed, the wax is melted off, revealing all the colors beneath.

This trellis design requires gluing 12 strands of gold thread to the top of an egg, then threading a pearl on two strands at a time. Glue each pearl as you go, keeping the spacing even.

For a dramatic effect, pile polka-dotted and beribboned silver blown-out eggs in a silver basket.

This Easter, try these natural and unique egg-dyeing techniques that are simple to do and produce beautiful results.

Beads have captivated mankind ever since our primitive ancestors began fashioning eggshells into baubles.

A pale-pink egg embellished with strips of thin velvet ribbon makes a statement as it props up a gold-embossed paper bird.

Wait -- don't toss that canceled postage into the trash. Use it to hatch Easter decorations.

This painted lavender egg is home to an Easter rabbit embossed in gold leaf. 

Ladybugs who lunch don painted-on faces and construction-paper attire (dots are made using a hole punch).

Adorned with artificial flowers and shimmering with Swarovski crystals, these hanging eggs make a dazzling addition to any Easter decor.

These graphic eggs take a design cue from the printing press, where misaligned plates result in slightly skewed, or "off-register," type and images.

Use this simple technique to create beautifully decorated Easter eggs.

Give the scissors a rest: The easiest way to make silhouettes for these intricately decorated eggs is to use craft punches.

These "cracked" eggshells get their jagged edges from electrical tape, and a chirping chick is made by dabbing food coloring into vinyl stencils.

Adhere common supplies such as tape, stickers, or even little leaves to eggs; when you dye the eggs and remove the "masks," the designs stand out.

Selected flower- and bird-themed artwork can transform a variety of eggs -- from naturally deep-green emu eggs to tinted and undyed ostrich eggs to painted wooden orbs -- into instant collectibles.

Turn rubber cement into an ornamental element by dripping it onto blown-out eggs.

The speckled beauty of a turkey egg suggests a natural kind of whimsy: Lifting the top by its acorn-cap handle reveals a porcelain egg on a downy-feathered nest of twigs.

Why is this bunny so chubby? From munching crepe paper-topped carrots!

We swirled a string of miniature imitation pearls to the top of half of this hinged egg. Its base is made of a simple button surrounded by more pearls.

Confetti-filled eggs have long been a popular part of Mexican Easter celebrations. Traditionally, an egg is broken over the head of a friend, who makes a wish upon its impact.

Transform plastic half-dozen-size cartons into attractive Easter egg carriers with ribbon and tissue paper.

This Easter, create a unique display for your blown and decorated eggs by hanging them from pussy willow branches.

Bright colors and geometric designs make modern-looking eggs, like these square-patterned ones.

This mama and her round little piglet are pretty in pink touches, fresh out of the carton -- but not for long! They're headed to a cool puddle of construction-paper mud as fast as their pipe-cleaner legs  will carry them.

Brighten a clutch of undyed eggs with stylized patterns from paper napkins.

Eggs that have been dyed a robin's egg blue make perfect bodies for these adorable baby birds. 

For this trellis design, we glued imitation pearls on top of gold latticed thread.

These baskets are made of eggshells filled with embossed paper flowers that honor the arrival of spring. Experiment by filling them with grass, velvet flowers, or even tiny Easter animal toys.

Add florals, stripes, and swirls to your Easter eggs with this simple silk-dyeing technique.

Write a personalized Easter message on a hollow chocolate egg using a contrasting shade of melted chocolate.

Add speckles to your Easter eggs using acrylic paint to give them a textured, authentic effect.

What makes these painted eggs so exquisite? The gold trim, which was made from paper as well as cord and ribbon. 

Perched on baking-cup pedestals, these plain blown eggs were decorated with cutouts from folded pastel tissue paper.

This hinged egg, which sits atop a bed of sequins, houses a small gold egg on a tiny pillow.

Stenciled flowers and leaves give chicken and goose eggs a rich, complex look.