A Fabergé egg is one of fifty jewelry Easter eggs made by Peter Carl Fabergé of the Fabergé company for the Russian Tsars between 1885 and 1917. The eggs are among the masterpieces of the jeweller's art having perfected the elaborate decoration of hollow eggs with precious stones and metals, and upon opening it, hidden treasures are revealed from within. Your child's available decorating materials may be a little more modest, but a masterpiece can still be created using just about anything.
To prepare the egg, you or your child can gently poke a hole, no larger than 1/4 inch, at each end of an uncooked room-temperature egg with a pin about the size of a darning needle. Stick the needle inside the egg to pierce the yolk and carefully stir up the insides then put your fingers over both openings and shake the egg, all to make the insides come out easier. Next, hold the egg over a bowl, and blow into the egg by putting your mouth on one end to force the contents out the bottom hole and then rinse the egg. If you do a few eggs, you could make an omelette or scrambled eggs while waiting for the egg(s) to dry which makes the egg shell stronger to decorate the next day.
To take this one step further, you can make an oval opening in the shell for decorating inside the egg. Using another small bowl at least 2 inches deep, fill it with white vinegar and place the dried hollow egg in the vinegar, using tape from each side of the bowl to hold it down; the deeper the egg is in the vinegar, the bigger the opening. Let the egg soak for 14 to 16 hours. The vinegar will react with the egg shell and cause it to dissolve. When removing the egg, rinse it off in cool water and remove the entire inner membrane with tweezers or your fingers, and again rinse and let dry. You should have a perfectly-shaped oval opening.
From here, you can decide how to decorate. If you bought an easter egg decorating kit, you can color the eggs inside and out with dye, paint, or leave them white. Which ever you decide, spraying the egg with a gloss finish will further strengthen the egg shell and keep any color from coming off on your hands. The materials to use can range from glitter glue - to outline the oval opening or other decorative touches - to gold-painted macaroni and barley glued on in some sort of pattern. Old jewellery pieces, sequins and preprinted stickers also make excellent decorative materials. For the inside, take small
little toys, like all those Kinder Surprise Egg that are all over the house, and make little scenes. Besides Easter, you can make other seasonal themes like Christmas, Halloween, or nature themes with flowers and animals.
You can then display these precious little Faberge-like eggs in an egg cup, or hang them by fashioning and glueing a ribbon or a chain to the top and I'm sure Faberge himself would be impressed.
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