Splatter Dripped Alcohol Ink Easter Eggs

This isn't the first time I've used alcohol ink to decorate plastic Easter eggs...and I assure you, it won't be the last. It's a ton of fun. But before I talk about the splatter eggs (shown above), I need to share a story about a craft experiment that fizzled.

I first set out to test a weird idea I had about dipping plastic Easter eggs in the alcohol ink much like you'd dip a regular egg in egg dye. I figured it could be a cool looking project, and I love testing out new application methods. So I cut the top off of a plastic solo-type cup (I think this one was Hefty brand, so you know, whatever you've got). Then I squirted some rubbing alcohol in the cup followed by 4 or 5 drips of the most saturated alcohol ink color I had (indigo) to see if it even sort of worked. I dropped the plastic eggs in the ink and swirled them around and some ink transferred. That was good enough for me.

So I went full steam ahead with a Pink-y red made with Pinata's Magenta and a cup with some turquoise and aqua green shades to add to my cup of blue. I started dipping the eggs and then setting them down to dry until I had a a whole bunch of eggs with light color washes of ink on them.

The pink looked nice on the yellow eggs and transferred a decent amount of color, but you can see it wasn't leaving much behind--it was pretty washed out. It was leaving an awful lot of ink on my fingers though.

My eggs were leaving little pools of ink on the craft mat after I dipped them, so I moved them to a paper plate lined with paper towels to dry.

After leaving them to dry for about a half an hour, they were still dripping ink, so I cracked one open to find out why. The ink was sneaking in the little holes in the plastic eggs.

So I opened them all up and dipped them again. I just dipped each side of the egg in the cup and then set them out to dry again. In the end the eggs didn't get much color. So, can you dip plastic Easter eggs in ink like you can dip real eggs in dye? Sort of. You don't get the brilliant bright colors you're used to from alcohol inks. Though, I'm not completely done with this concept, but bare plastic eggs and thinned ink just don't quite work.

So the color washed eggs sat on their paper towel plate all week and I decided to jazz them up with some straight non-thinned down ink. I lined my eggs up on the craft mat and grabbed all of my brightly colored and pastel-y alcohol inks and started dripping.

I dripped ink on the eggs at random. I went through my stash of colors (below) once before reassessing.

I used about a dozen different colors. I wanted them to be bright and rainbow-y.

 

After the first pass, I went back and filled in with more color. Then I grabbed a bamboo skewer to stick in the hole to move and pick up the wet inked eggs. As I was hoping to move the eggs to a drying location, I noticed I had missed several areas on the backs of the eggs, so I kept inking.

After the eggs were covered in drips and splatters, I moved them to the paper towel lined plate (with the bamboo skewer) and left them to dry for a couple hours. It was a bit humid and the dripped ink stayed tacky for quite a while before drying.

But when done, the eggs were much more fun and bright. The color wash underneath the drips gives the eggs a bit of a grungy modern art look that's kind of fun and different. Dripping onto clean eggs would probably get you a slightly cleaner look. Either route you take, they will definitely be colorful!