This is a guest post by Katie of Love, Life, and My Journey
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Easter is coming up in a few weeks and since my baby will only be 5 months and can’t have candy yet, I racked my brain for what I could put in his Easter basket. Some googling brought me to the idea of dying wood craft eggs with food coloring! Perfect! Since they are just dyed with food coloring and finished with a beeswax wood polish, they are safe for my baby to chew on.
Here’s what you’ll need to get started.
- Wood Craft Eggs: I got mine at Michael’s
- 1 cup Olive Oil for the Beeswax wood polish
- Beeswax: I found mine in the candle making aisle at Michael’s (What would make this even better is if you found some local beeswax from a beekeeper)
- Grater to grate up the beeswax
- Sandpaper to smooth out your eggs
- Paintbrush to paint on your food coloring
- Food Coloring
First fill a microwave safe dish with 1 cup of olive oil. It’s easy to use a measuring dish like this so you can easily know when you’ve added enough beeswax. Then, grate up your beeswax until you reach the 1 1/4 cup line. This means you will have 1 cup olive oil and 1/4 cup beeswax (1 part beeswax, 4 parts oil).
Next, microwave until all the beeswax is melted in the oil. This only took 2 minutes in my microwave. The tutorial said to add to a wide bowl for stirring. I did this, but didn’t really find it necessary. I could have just stirred it in my measuring cup. Finally, just keep stirring it occasionally as it cools. You will end up with something that looks like this. And that’s it! The hardest part was grating up the beeswax.
Ok, now for dying the eggs. First, use your fine grit sandpaper and smooth out your eggs. Make sure there are no splinters. Then all I did was add about 5 drops of dye to a bowl with a splash of water. Use your brush and paint your eggs until they’re fully saturated to your liking. I just kept adding layer after layer until it seemed like they were no longer getting darker. I did this on some wax paper so I didn’t get any dye on my counter.
Let them sit out to dry.
When your beeswax polish is cooled, you can transfer it to a container. I just used a small mason jar. It should last up to a year. When your eggs are dry, rub in the beeswax polish with your hands. It will make the colors a bit more saturated and your eggs nice and shiny!
And that’s all there is to it! It took me maybe 2 hours one day and like 5 minutes the next to apply the polish.
Since I have lots of beeswax wood polish left, I can’t wait to make AJ some more wood toys!
GOLD / wonderful apricot / 22276 posts
Love it!
cherry / 175 posts
This is an AWESOME idea! My LO is only 4 months old so candy is out of the question for her Easter basket this year. But I love this idea! She is teething right now and putting everything in her mouth so these would be perfect! Thanks for this!
hostess / wonderful honeydew / 32460 posts
So cute!
Love it!!
hostess / wonderful persimmon / 25556 posts
Fuuuun!!! I love this idea!
coconut / 8079 posts
Great idea! I love the colors.
blogger / wonderful cherry / 21616 posts
Yay you posted it!!! Good job
they’re so cute!
cantaloupe / 6164 posts
They are so cute!
coconut / 8498 posts
Thank you for sharing this process! We have an unfinished Noah’s Ark play set that I’ve been wanting to at least polish. I may dye the animals now too.
bananas / 9357 posts
I’m so excited to see my DIY on Hellobee!
pomelo / 5321 posts
I was so excited when you posted these on IG! So happy you did a tutorial!
kiwi / 549 posts
I did this same project a few weeks ago, and found that even after I sealed the eggs, the dye bled. I didn’t sand my eggs first, and I waited 48 hours before sealing the eggs to let the color really soak in and dry– but other than that, I did exactly the same thing as you do in this tutorial. Any guesses why my eggs bleed the dye?
As it is, I had to boil the eggs in hot water to get the sealant off, in the process losing much of the dye, in order to get the eggs back to square one so I can try something else that won’t bleed.
hostess / wonderful apple seed / 16729 posts
Love this idea!
pomegranate / 3383 posts
So glad you submitted your tutorial! Love the idea and your eggs look great!! I’m definitely going to try this with a variety of wooden toys.
pomelo / 5326 posts
Love this! Beautiful colours and child friendly! I will definitely do this next year!
coconut / 8681 posts
I bought my eggs this weekend! Can’t wait to attempt it
GOLD / wonderful apricot / 22646 posts
Great job K! Love it!
pear / 1769 posts
I love how they turned out! I’m thinking about doing this with wooden letters that spell out my LO’s name.
pea / 22 posts
So beeswax is ok for babies to ingest?