Heitmann Egg Decorating Set Giveaway

I woke up this morning feeling generous and decided I would hold a little Easter giveaway today! 

Having spent the past week thinking about Easter crafts and what new things to try this year, I thought I would share my favourite egg dye brand with you, because I will definitely be using it again this year. I have already bought several packs in preparation.

We have used Heitmann egg dye for years and years now and have always been really pleased with the results, not to mention the fun we have had deciding on the colours and techniques to use.

The set contains five dyes. All you need to do is dissolve the dye tabs in water and vinegar (the instructions are on the back of the pack in several languages) and then the fun starts. You can create all kinds of patterns and designs on your eggs using simple techniques.

So here is your chance to win! 

Just enter a comment on this post, letting me know your favourite Easter craft and you'll be in with a chance to win one of these little sets. Feel free to share the giveaway details on Facebook, Twitter, etc. 

If you want to leave a link to your own craft ideas, please do. 

I'll choose a winner on Monday 22nd. Good luck everyone! I am excited to hear about your crafts. 

Some of our favourites from last year

Click here for all our Easter posts.

[Disclaimer: This is not a sponsored post. I bought and paid for the Heitmann set myself and the idea of the giveaway is all my own. All words, opinions and photos are my own too. I am just in a generous mood today.]

Easter Crafts with Kids #2 - Decorated Eggs

As I mentioned in my previous egg-dying post, painting or dyeing hard-boiled eggs is a really big thing here in Germany. Even though my children absolutely detest eggs, except in cakes, pancakes or waffles, they love decorating them. The Bavarian and I are then left to consume vast quantities of boiled eggs. Last year we tried out blown eggs or the lazier version, emptied out eggs. 

Emptied out eggs are my name for egg shells that have had a fingertip-sized hole made in them and the contents literally emptied out. I am not a big fan of blowing eggs, so in the run to to Easter last year and this I used the emptying method whenever I was using eggs for baking or scrambled eggs, etc. After a quick rinse out, I put the shells to one side and when the time came to start decorating, we had a nice pile of almost-intact shells to work with. 

Here are a few photos of how we got on last year.

All the paraphernalia you need: deep bowls for the dye, a pot for boiling the eggs and plenty of eggs or eggshells. We use IRIS egg dyeing tablets. They are everywhere here in Germany. You dissolve them in cold water and add a few drops of vinegar then drop in the eggs. You can find similar egg dye here.

Various shades of blue attained by leaving the eggs in the dye for different lengths of time.

Pretty pastel pinks and purples arranged together in an egg carton.

We used strips of patterned paper to weave little Easter baskets and then filled them with shredded paper and coloured straw. These make very pretty Easter egg gifts.

While the boys fiddled about with colours, I tried out some bird stamps I bought in Waterstones on the white eggs. After a few practice goes I got the hang of how much pressure to apply and I was quite pleased with the simplicity of the end result.

I was surprised to find that the inside of the egg shells often took on a much more interesting shade of colour than the outside. Eggshells in blues and purples scattered around a little vase of bluebells made a dainty litte centrepiece on the kitchen table last Easter.

German Easter Egg Decorations - A Photoshoot

Decorating hard-boiled eggs with children is a typical German Easter tradition. There are so many ways to decorate eggs and over the last few years we have been trying them out- From sticker patterns to hand painting to natural dying, the possibilities are well not quite endless but certainly vast. 

The only problem we have encountered along the way is what to do with all the eggs. Our children don't like eggs and there are only so many egg sandwiches and salads my husband and I can eat. Here in Gemany it is perfectly normal to give painted hard-boiled eggs as a gift at Easter, so that is one way to offload some of them. 

In the end I began collecting the egg shells left over from baking. Once the kids got the hang of handling them carefully, we had quite a lot of fun decorating them. So far this year I haven't involved the kids. I have been experimenting with techniques and colours, both of dye and of egg. Here are a few photos of the variations I got out of purple dye. I'll be posting the children's version in a few days.

A variety of shades of purple arranged in a jar

To make an eggshell vase, make a finger tip sized hole in an eggshell (here I used a white egg), empty out the raw egg and rinse the egg. Pat it dry and pop it into a jar of dye. To get the two-tone effect, only fill the jar to the height you want and stabilise the eggshell by inserting the handle of a fork into the hole. This keeps the egg standing and weighs it down in the dye too. Once the egg has obtained the desired colour, remove it from the jar, leave to dry and then fill with water and small flowers. To keep the egg standing you can sit it in an eggcup or stand it into sand, salt or soil for example. I used broken walnut shells simply because I hadn't dumped them on the compost heap after making walnut cake. 

To create this look, stick normal gold star stickers (the kind you might use for a reward chart) onto the eggshell then immerse the shell in the dye and leave until the desired colour has been obtained. We had three different brands of sticker around the house. Of those, two stuck. One type came off in the liquid. Here I used regular brown eggs and the dye took a little longer to take effect.

The inside of the eggshells takes on a different shade of colour to the outside. Arranged in a jar or with tealights in a shallow bowl, this creates a simple and elegant Easter decoration.