How to Make "Flowering" Easter Eggs

After posting last year's "Irretrievable Easter Egg", quite a few (fortunately, not all) of you were aghast that I'd prank innocent kids that way. So this year, I created a "prank" that everyone should find light-hearted and way cool.

Basically, I developed an egg that, when picked up, would leave behind a little cloth flower pinned to the ground. There's still room left in the egg for candy, so even the most sensitive kids should have no psychic scaring trauma from this project.

Here's what I used:

• A bag of 42 plastic eggs
• A bag of Hershey's chocolate Springtime Flowers (seemed appropriate)
• Some wire coat hangers
• Leftover fabric scraps
• Hot glue
• A copping saw
• A pair of pliers

I'm not a flower-making expert, and there are probably a lot better ways of making fabric flowers out there. But, I sorta threw these together at the last minute so here's how I did it.

I cut the fabric into rough square and circular shapes. Then, I made cut around the edges to form the petals. I went really fast, so they are pretty rough. Then I cut a bunch of smaller circles for the flower centers (pollen bulbs?). A dab of hot glue keeps the flowers together.

To pin the flowers to the ground, I cut 8" sections out of the coat hangers and bent them into really long staples. These are pretty much what you can buy at your local garden center for $3. So, those of you rolling in money could skip this step and just go buy them.

The flowers are finished by hot-gluing each one onto the bridge of a staple.

The next step was a little tricky. I had to find a way to easily cut off the pointy end of the egg without cracking the plastic. The best way I found was to hold the egg against a work bench and saw off the end with a coping saw. There are probably better ways, but this was the easiest I could come up with. A band saw is probably the best way, but I don't have one of those :(

You also have to make sure the hole isn't big enough for the candy to slip through. The size of the hole will sorta be determined by the candy you stick inside.