Finding unique ways to dye Easter eggs can be so much fun. We love these melted crayon Easter eggs. It can be such a fun variation on dying eggs.

The process of dying Easter eggs with young children can be, well, a mess. While I’d love to say that I’m such an easy-going, relaxed mom that I just accept the mess as part of the process, in reality, it takes a lot of the fun out of it for me.

Since my kids had so much fun with the Hot Rocks activity we did over the summer, we decided to carry that over into our Easter egg decorating.

The result was beautiful, unique looking Easter eggs that my kids could do on their own. You could continue on and dye these eggs still. It gives the eggs a really fun, almost marbled look.

We stopped with the crayons because I didn’t want to mess with the dye  . . .  and my kids got hungry. Eggs are for eating after-all.

Materials Needed

Old Crayons – Preferably with the paper taken off

Hard boiled eggs, still hot – You can leave these in the pot with hot water for quite a while to keep them warm.

Paper towels/newspapers to protect surfaces until the melted crayon dries – I lay some paper towels down on a cookie sheet with a rim. I use cookie sheets for pretty much every craft we do because they are wonderful for containing messes and you don’t have to worry about your eggs rolling away.

Easter egg dye (optional)

Instructions

Boil your eggs until they are done. If you need some tips for making the perfect hard boiled egg, there’s a great post you should check out over at Good Life Eats. You do want to keep your egg shells hot so when your eggs are done, only remove the egg from the pot that you are decorating first. Leaving the others in warm water will help keep the shells warm, although they will continue to cook a bit so you may want to shorten the cooking time just a bit.

Remove an egg from the water and allow it to air dry for a minute. The water should dry up fairly quickly if the eggs are completely done. Lay the egg on a paper towel (or back in an egg carton if you are doing this with young children who don’t want to touch the egg). The eggs will be hot but the crayons will still melt if the shell is just warm so you can let them cool for a minute if you want.

If the egg is too hot to touch, you can use one fingertip to stabilize it. My kids had good luck coloring their Easter eggs as they rolled around on the paper towel. It let them color all the way around the egg without touching it. Once it cooled down a bit they used their fingertips to hold the egg still and get the spots they missed.

Use the crayons to draw whatever you want on the egg. The hot eggshell will melt the crayons and create really vibrant colors. As an added benefit, you won’t get dye leaking through the shell and staining your egg so if your kids (or you) are grossed out by that you are in luck.