My new favorite thing is nail polish marbling. Have you tried it? The other day I decided to dip a few eggs like I did these glasses – and then proceeded to work my way through two dozen eggs. It makes me seriously wish I had more colors of nail polish!
And then I had to take roughly a million pictures. Because aren’t they just the coolest?
To marble some eggs with nail polish here’s what you need:
- Eggs. A lot of them. Because once you start you’ll want keep dipping.
- Nail polish in all kinds of fun shades. My Essie polishes worked fine this time, I think because I wasn’t trying to make a specific design. And silver polish was amazing!
- A plastic cup filled with room temperature water. This is very important! If the water is too cold or too hot, the polish won’t work.
- Toothpicks.
- Nail polish remover. You’ll need this to get the polish off your fingers when you’re done.
Drop lots of nail polish into the water. If it sinks, the temperature isn’t right. You want it to spread out over the top of the water. Have fun playing with colors! Then take a toothpick and swirl the colors a bit.
Hold your egg between your fingers so that you cover the least amount of surface area on the egg. Then dunk straight down into the water, hold for a second underwater and then bring it up. The polish will cover about half of the egg. Sit the egg in a carton or something and let it dry.
Have you decorated any eggs for Easter yet? I dyed some with the kids last weekend and it was really hard to share.
haha! these are great! We have an annual Easter egg bashing fight at work…these would be stronger than the plain old dyed eggs! Might actually win the fight!
Can i eat the eggs after this? :)
You’ve got to be kidding me! This is brilliant! I want to to do everything in swirl nail polish.
http://livinginthemoment87.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/easter-crafts.html
So, I tried. And I failed miserbly!
I don’t think that’s a craft fail! They look pretty cool to me!
Oh thank you doll :)))) I think I just had super high expectations! Anyway, it was fun and that’s all the matters right?! =D
They look super cool. I’m gunna try today.
Oh, these are absolutely gorgeous, Steph! What an amazing idea…you come up with such lovely stuff.
Ronnie xo
These are beautiful! Love how vibrant the colors are!
Hi, these look fabulous so I tried them yesterday. I have a couple of concerns and mine did not turn out even half way so nice as the ones on the photos. Firstly, the smell is unbearable. I didn’t realise how bad it was until my daughter called out from the bathroom two rooms away asking what I am up to and I only did two eggs by then. I took them out to the balcony right away and had to keep the windows open for an hour in the flat – being nearly 0 Celsius outside. Well, it is just my story :)
Today I thought I take them in and see, but it is not because of their looks that I will not have them inside but again their smell. They stink big time! So for me this project is a no-no…. I am so sad :(
I worked with hollow eggs btw and they work fine if you can stick them onto something, easier to dry them anyway.
It sounds like your eggs were out of date :/
what a great idea, these look fantastic! thanks for sharing :)
Wow, that is very cool – love your eggs!! I’ve got this linked to my Easter eggs DIY post too today, thanks for posting your tutorial!
It is not working… Looks cool under the water but when it comes out… It looks crappy…
Mine look crappy just out of the water too! (see the pic above) How do they look after they have a chance to dry?
I cannot wait to try this!
Thanks for sharing!
Messy project. Keep area well ventilated because of he fumes. It’s difficult to cover all sides of the egg. Worked well on plastic eggs, strung on fishing line (allowed for smudge free drying and dipping) and coverage of the egg.
Those are so pretty!
& why not use a wire dipper like the 1s that come w/ egg dyeing kits? I’m old enough to remember when you could buy egg marbling kits that used lacquer paints similar to nail polish. We placed the dipped eggs on waxed paper to dry.
We ate the eggs too – not sure if that did us any good, tho…..
I remember those kits too. The dyes came in glass bottles with bunny heads for the tops. I’ve been looking for that type for years!!!
Ruby’s Easter egg dye. They stopped making it.
Hinkle still make the egg colors for marbleizing, Check out their website
i wanna try this with some beads!
Oh my…..how awesome!!!!!
Great idea, my daughter does her nails like this all the time. Why not try it on plastic eggs too? Put a string through the end first, dip and hang it to dry. ********* You certainly wouldnt want to eat the egg after doing this.
Love the results we are going to give this a try when we do eggs next wk thanks!
First, please don’t get me wrong, these eggs are very lovely. But I think it’s definitely important to note that nail polish usually contains several seriously dangerous toxins, and egg shells are porous, so you really wouldn’t want to eat them after they’ve been dipped in nail polish.
I was thinking the same thing. So, maybe doing this on plastic eggs – although I think there are easier, less smelly, and cleaner methods. :)
Oh man, or taping off the tip of little girls Easter shoes an marbleizing the the tips of the shoes! I hope that made sense. Then you could paint polka dots or little eggs over the rest of the shoes. My mind is spinning! Thank you so much for this inspiration.
They are gorgeous! Think about using big jewelry beads ands stringing them up into festive spring jewelry!
This is so cool! I love how vivid all the colors are!
These are SO pretty – makes me want to color eggs! Haha!
If you use blown eggs, with a long craft needle, you could thread a knotted piece of thread or fishing line through both ends and dip it. That would prevent getting polish on your hands AND you could hang them to dry
Sounds good but I’m not sure a hollow egg would sink in the water? Did you try it yet? Maybe you could roll it around on the top?
Also, we use paint and a cheap tin (pie tin, roasting tin etc. from Dollar Tree) same thing and no messy fingers – just put a piece of poster board in the bottom and squirt lines of paint on it then put in the egg (one at a time) and roll it around until it’s covered the way you want it – you will also get a pretty cool looking piece of poster board to use some other crafty way!! Happy Crafting!!
These are so cool, Sofia would be very impressed with the Easter bunny who brought these eggs :)
Very festive and fun!
I’m over the top crushing on this. LOVE the vibrant colors!
Is it safe to eat the eggs afterwards?
I personally wouldn’t eat hard boiled eggs that have been colored with anything other than a food grade dye.
These are AMAZING!! I’ve been dying to try this marbling technique. I love these colors!
I remember trying a marbling kit one Easter when I was a kid and those eggs did NOT turn out well. Who knew the secret was nail polish?! These are so pretty!
Those are fantastically cool!
Wow! This are gorgeous! I’m so used to seeing marbling applications in pastels. These are really striking. Very well done!
What beautiful colors! So perfect for Easter.
They are gorgeous!! I’m using this technique to paint a tray ;)
That looks beautiful!!!! I’ve seen that on Pinterest for doing your fingernails, but never thought about it on eggs before! Gorgeous!!
This is so cool- I would never think to do this!
Love the result ! And somehow, it looks less intimidating than doing it on nails !
My Blog – A Pretty Nest