Craft #2-- String Easter Eggs

Just in time for Easter, this was pretty easy and you get to get nice and gooey and sticky! Here's my inspriration , you just click on the picture and it takes you on to the instructions on Crafty Endeavor.  Also, after I had already made the eggs, I found instructions for baskets! I may still make one :)  

Basic idea:  dip string into a glue/stiffener, wrap it around a balloon, let it dry, and pop the balloon out from underneath the dried string. 

So! you need some sort of string- embroidery thread, for example, or crochet thread, which is what I used. For a stiffener I used a watered down white glue (the same glue I used in the previous post to adhere the tissue paper!), but you can use liquid starch also. I chose glue simply because I'll have opportunities to use the rest of the bottle, and because I don't have any need to starch my tee-shirts. And then, of course, you need balloons-- water balloons are about right!
 I used about three yards for each balloon, but I probably could've used more. It was recommended in the instructions to coil your string into the glue mixture to avoid knots. I did that for the first couple balloons, and it did keep my string pretty tangle-free, but I discovered it was faster and easier to coil the string around my fingers before dealing with the glue at all-- your fingers get pretty sticky which makes it a lot harder to deal with dry string.

Once I had my balloons blown up, all my string coiled, and my glue to a slightly watered down consistency, but not super watery, I dunked a coil into the glue, squeezed out the excess and started wrapping it around the balloon.  Unfortunately, due to gluey fingers, I don't have any pictures of that part. You just wrap it all around.

 I made them in the evening and left them to dry overnight, then popped the balloons after I got home from class in the afternoon.  There was a bunch of glue remains left in between the strings, and I scraped some of it out with an open pair of scissors.

Once I had all my eggs, (I ended up with six- one balloon deflated before it dried, and one just wasn't strong enough) I strung them up the long way and hung them in the little space between the windows in our living room.  Perfect little decoration! Some  of them kinda look like pears though. Oh well! I like them!