Hurray it’s Easter again! I love Easter because it just means:
- Painting boring plain eggs into colourful surprises,
- Easter Egg Hunt fun, and
- Chocolate Eggs, rabbits and chicks to devour
But another thing that makes me love Easter that extra bit more is really the theme colours. I mean if you think about it every holiday has its theme colours, Christmas has its red and green, St. Patricks has the Irish Green, Chinese New Year has its signature red but aside from the coincidences of the recurring colours of red and green, the fact is these are all pretty strong bright colours… And I’m a pastel colours sort of girl. I love all colours in the lighter shade, which incidentally happen to be the colours of Easter! In two words the decorations of Easter are always softly beautiful!
Okay so let’s get down to green business with Easter…
Easter can’t be Easter unless you have the eggs but if I wrote year in and year out about just how to safely (for child and environment) dye eggs it would be an absolute bore. Instead I’m going to run by you the ‘green options’ you have when it comes to the eggs.
1. Traditional Easter calls for Traditional Eggs
This tradition should never be allowed to die because it’s just so much fun. All you need are eggs and the dye/pigment source. For the eggs, either buy organic or local. For the colours you’d be amazed at what you can get boiling/crushing different kinds of vegetables, fruits and spices! But if you’re in a rush then just go for the vegetable dyes that come in a bottle. Fast and eco-conscious.
2. Crafty Eggs for a Crafty Easter
Alright, so anything to do with making Easter eggs is in its own right a craft activity. But if you thought painting an egg was difficult, wait till you try Felted eggs or Millefiori ones. To make felted eggs you can use wooden, plastic or Polystyrene egg shapes as the base whereas for a Millefiori egg you can only use either wooden or real eggs as this one involves the oven. Now I won’t go into the details of how to make them because this site right here already does an amazing job at that. But I’d just like to remind everyone that the eco-friendly nature of these 2 types of crafted eggs lays in its durability and reusability.
3. A special Egg fit for the White House
Well I guess this one is a little controversial, raises mixed feelings amongst the people. I completely see and appreciate the green stand from First Lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama by using paperboard eggs but I guess the dissatisfaction is about tradition vs green conservation efforts.
For those a bit lost on what these are, they are eggs made from Sustainability Forest Initiative (SFI) – certified paperboard that contains no wood fibers from endangered forests painted with vegetable oil-based inks and a water-based coating that will be used in the 2010 White House Easter Egg Roll. But if you’re not the USA and you’d like to see what these are, well you can view them here (easter.nationalparks.org) and if you really like what you see, you can purchase a souvenir egg online too ($7.50 an egg!).
Personally I’m sticking back to painting my eggs into Easter Eggs but I just might try my hand at the Millefiori ones…
