Hand Painted, Gilded Eggs

Hey there! I hope you all are staying safe and taking care of yourselves! I’ve been working from home now for four weeks. Time seems weird now that I’ve been working from home for the past month. It seems so weird that Easter is two days away and Passover started on Wednesday. Today I thought I’d share with you some gilded eggs I painted.

I know that a lot of people celebrate and decorate for the Easter Holiday. I generally don’t decorate for any holidays other than Halloween and Christmas, but I will change out some seasonal decor throughout the year.

Last March I went on my annual Vintage shop hop. My first stop was in Pewaukee, and included Roost Mercantile and The Vintage Barn Chicks. I picked up these eggs from the Vintage Barn Chicks.

When I first saw them, I thought they would be cool to paint and maybe add them to my Etsy site. I thought they were paper eggs. I was in for a surprise when I went to start painting the eggs. I saw that three of them were broken. It turns out that they were real hollowed-out and washed eggs!

I had 48 eggs to paint, so I divided them in to sets of 6 and gathered my paints. I left some unpainted in case I broke some eggs while painting, which I ended up doing twice.

Paints used:

  • Miss Mustard Seed – Aviary, Arabesque, and Dried Lavender.
  • Country Chic Paint – Dune Grass, Lazy Linen, and a custom blend of 1 part Lazy Linen and 3 parts Full Bloom.

In the photo below, I had started to paint some in Fusion Mineral Paint’s Coral but I thought it was too bright and orangey for the look I was going for. Those will eventually get repainted.

Because I had to mix the Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint, I started with those colors first, and painted one coat. While the first coat of the first color was drying, I painted the first coat of the second color, and then repeated the process until all of the eggs were painted. Between each coat, I very lightly sanded each egg, especially the ones with painted with Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint. No matter how well I think I mix the paint, and remix there always seems to be chunks on the bottom.

I cut used paper towel rolls into stands for the eggs to dry. I had found a set of six black egg stands at the Dollar Spot at my local target. Both were helpful when painting. I could paint half of each egg. and let it dry before paining the other half. The eggs in the foreground are painted in Arabesque and the ones in the background are painted in Aviary.

These sets are painted in Dune Grass on the left and painted in Lazy Linen on the right.

Once the eggs were dried, the fun part began! I took each egg and applied the adhesive for the gold leaf. Following the directions, I let it sit until tacky.

Once tacky, I applied the gold leaf. I let that sit for a bit and then started brushing off the excess. On some eggs, I used a full piece of gold leaf, and on others I used left over pieces.

Once all of the gold leaf was dried, I sealed it with the sealer. And to finish each egg, I waxed them, to seal the paint and to darken up the colors.

One of my broken eggs. I was using a little too much pressure when I was waxing the egg.

Take care and have a safe weekend.

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