Otherwise known as Ostara, this beautiful festival celebrates the awakening of nature, the return of the light, and the promise of new life.
There are many traditions associated with Ostara including planting seeds, spending time outside or joining friends for an Equinox feast, but I wanted to indulge my love of painting to decorate some delicate quails eggs.
In case you’d like to join me in this mindful craft, I’ve given instructions below. Of course, you can tailor them to suit your preferred eggs (real or not) and whatever paints or art supplies you have at home!
Ostara Egg Painting
🪺 Add a base coat on the eggs first to give you a surface to work on, otherwise they can be a bit shiny. We used some emulsion paint from a tester pot but acrylic would also work. This could be coloured paint but we quite like a washy layer to give depth.
🪺 Then add a wash of watercolour, gouache or acrylic for a nice pastel hue, and let dry.
🪺 Time to bring magic with your design. Use a fine brush for the paint work; we used a no.4 round brush. Paint some foliage, patterns, flowers - it’s your choice. We used quite pigment dense paint at this point to make the design stand out and pop.
Hints & Tips
The smaller the egg, the trickier it is to paint…
For decorating you can use felt tips if it is a little easier to control. Just definitely base coat your eggs otherwise it will slip off
Build a little bridge with your fingers. With one hand holding the egg, use the little finger of your painting hand to rest against your egg-painting hand for some extra stability
There are some amazing resources online for blowing your own eggs
We sourced our quails eggs from a floristry supply shop, you can find the ones we used here
Do let me know if this has inspired you to paint your own Eggs for Ostara, I’d love to see your creations.