Egg Geodes

A rainbow of egg shell geodes

I saw this project idea on pinterest.  It is from Mr. Figgy, who was featured on Martha Stewart if you would like to see a video on it.

I had to try it out, I just thought they looked wonderful, and as you can see from the picture above, they came out so pretty.

Before we began the project I had agate slices and geodes set up on a light box in the studio/kitchen.

the children enjoyed looking at the different rocks and playing with them.

After we talked about the geodes, I called the children up one at a time to make the geode eggs.

It really is a supervised activity for little ones.

Here is what you will need:

A plastic container

Elmer's glue

Hot water (almost boiling hot-I used my water heater from college:)

Egg Dye

An egg shell that has been blown out or broken from the top so that you have a good deal of the egg

Alum (you can find this online, or from your health food store in the bulk spice section)

gloves or a slotted spoon

The Process:

Make sure your egg is clean and dry, and then paint Elmer's glue inside the egg.  After putting glue on your egg, sprinkle alum all over it and allow it to dry over night or several hours.

*a note about alum, Alum is a pickling agent, it is also used in baking soda, however ingesting large amounts of alum is dangerous.  Do not leave it unattended especially around children, keep it in a safe place and monitor the children when they use it.  I sprinkled the alum over the glue to be safe.

once your egg is ready add your hot water to your dye.  They recommend 2 cups water to 3/4 cups alum, however alum can be expensive so we did 1 cup of water to 3/8 cup alum and they came out fine.  So we added our 1 cup of hot water to our dye, stirred until mixed and then added the alum.

Stir again till all the alum is dissolved, and then place you egg in the water inside facing up.

Let you egg sit in the solution 12-15 hours. If you would like large crystals, keep it in your solution longer. 

After you take your egg out of the solution, place it on a drying rack placed over a cookie sheet and let it dry for several hours.  It will still be fragile, but not as fragile as when you first remove it as the crystals need to solidify a little bit.

Here are some close up pictures of the finished geodes made my the kids.

Beautiful.