Decorating Easter Eggs

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

Give Easter eggs a crafty, homespun look with a bold stripe of neon thread.

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.

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

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.)

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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. 

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

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

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

Obsessed with washi tape? With a single roll, kids will love coming up with their own creative and fun designs.

Make the Washi Tape-Decorated Easter Eggs

No dye? No problem. Here's a creative solution with an ingredient you likely have in your makeup drawer! Nail polish comes in a rainbow of colors and produces all kinds of whirly-swirly designs on eggs.

Blowing out eggs takes time and effort. Here's a fun, easy idea: papier-mache eggs are perfect for a colorblocked color scheme, and they'll last for many Easters to come.