If you want to keep an egg (shell) indefinitely, decorate it for a special occasion such as Easter, or fill an egg with mustard or similar to stop chickens from eating eggs, then you will need to know how to blow an egg.
By blowing an egg, you remove the contents so that it doesn’t go off, leaving the shell intact except for two small holes at either end.
There is an unlimited number of things you can create from your egg once it has been blown, limited only by your imagination! The frog to the right was made from a blown egg by Sally Barnet.
What you'll need
To blow an egg, you will need a bowl for the contents of the egg, a large sewing needle, a cocktail stick and a small syringe.
Once you have these items, it’s relatively straight forwards to remove the contents of the egg.
How to blow an egg
- Clean off any dirt or muck on the outside of the shell but ideally, choose clean eggs.
- At the pointed end of the egg, make a small hole using the needle.
- Make another hole, slightly bigger on the broad end of the egg. Insert the cocktail stick and wiggle it back and forth to break the yolk up.
- Blow into the first hole at the top of the egg whilst holding the egg over a bowl. The contents will slowly come out. This isn’t easy to do and to get the yolk out, you have to make sure it’s broken with the cocktail stick. If this is difficult, you can also use the syringe, although take care not to damage the hole.
- Once the egg is empty, squirt water into the larger hole on the broad end of the egg and shake the egg to clean the inside.
- Leave the egg to dry.
Once dry, eggs can be used for a variety of purposes, for example, these lovely dark brown Marans eggs have been blown to preserve them to show their colour.
They were on display by the Marans Club at the National Poultry Show held at Stoneleigh (UK) in December 2008.
Now you know how to blow an egg, please leave me a comment below – I’d love to hear what you’re doing with them!
Here are a few ideas for you. Many of these eggs were decorated by Sally Barnett, who has won many awards at poultry shows with her decorated eggs.
Photo gallery of decorated eggs
