Egg Decorating Ideas: Sports-Themed

If you have athletes in the family, here are some egg decorating ideas that are sure to score at Easter or any time of the year. Decorated like baseballs, soccer balls, basketballs and footballs, these eggs will be fan favorites for any season. Along with your hard boiled eggs, you will need red and black permanent markers, orange acrylic paint, brown acrylic paint (or red and green to mix), a foam paint brush, black craft vinyl or contact paper, a craft knife, and white adhesive paper. Using an actual baseball to study the red stitching, lightly draw a pencil line on the egg that resembles the path of the stitching. You'll notice that the stitching is in one continuous line, even though it looks like two separate ovals. Follow the pencil line, drawing red marks along the path with a red permanent marker. They should look like little red arrows. Keep going until you end up where you started. To make the soccer ball eggs, you will need 10 to 15 pentagon shapes cut out of black adhesive vinyl. They should be about ¼ to ½ inch in size. Cut them out with a craft knife. It's easier to either draw them on the back of the vinyl first, or print pentagon shapes out on the computer and trace them with your knife on the vinyl. Peel the vinyl pentagon shapes from their backing and space them evenly around the egg. Depending on how large your shapes are, you will have four to five rows of pentagons. Smooth out the vinyl with your fingers so they lie flat on the egg. To mimic the groove lines in an actual soccer ball, use a black permanent marker to draw lines between the pentagons. Basketballs are a brownish orange, but It is very difficult to dye an egg with food coloring to the exact shade of a basketball. Mixing red and yellow dyes to make orange does not always yield the ideal results. Therefore, it is much easier to just paint the egg with orange acrylic paint using a foam brush. Paint one side, let it dry, and then paint the other. Using a black permanent marker, draw the markings of the basketball. There is one line around the middle of the egg lengthwise, one line around the middle of the egg widthwise, and one oval at each end. As with the basketball eggs, the football eggs are easier to paint than dye with food coloring. Paint the egg with brown acrylic paint using a foam brush. Because the color is so dark, you may need two coats to achieve complete coverage. To give the egg the look of a football, cut small strips of white adhesive paper for the white laces and stripes. If the adhesive paper does not adhere properly to the painted egg, add a dab of glue to the paper. Get the whole gang together to make these eggs and celebrate the home team. But remember, because the pens and paints used to decorate these eggs are not food safe, these sports eggs are for decorative purposes only.