DIY Wooden Toy Eggs

My first real tutorial! Easter is coming up in a few weeks and since my baby will only be 5 months, and can't have candy yet, I racked my brain of what I could put in his Easter basket. Some googling brought me to the idea of dying wood craft eggs with food coloring! Perfect! Since they are just dyed with food coloring and finished with a beeswax wood polish, they are safe for my baby to chew on.

Here's what you'll need to get started.

• Wood Craft Eggs: I got mine at Michael's 
• 1 cup Olive Oil for the Beeswax wood polish
• Beeswax: I found mine in the candle making aisle at Michael's (What would make this even better is if you found some local beeswax from a beekeeper)
• Grater to grate up the beeswax
• Sandpaper to smooth out your eggs
• Paintbrush to paint on your food coloring
• Food Coloring

Let's first start with how to make the beeswax wood polish. I used this tutorial. It's simple. It's just 4 parts oil and 1 part beeswax. And you can use any oil you like. I just had olive oil on hand. 

First fill a microwave safe dish with 1 cup of olive oil. It's easy to use a measuring dish like this so you can easily know when you've added enough beeswax. 

Then, grate up your beeswax until you reach the 1 1/4 cup line. This means you will have 1 cup olive oil and 1/4 cup beeswax (1 part beeswax, 4 parts oil). Next, microwave until all the beeswax is melted in the oil. This only took 2 minutes in my microwave. 

The tutorial said to add to a wide bowl for stirring. I did this, but didn't really find it necessary. I could have just stirred it in my measuring cup. 

Finally, just keep stirring it occasionally as it cools. You will end up with something that looks like this. And that's it! The hardest part was grating up the beeswax. 

Ok, now for dying the eggs. First, use your fine grit sandpaper and smooth out your eggs. Make sure there are no splinters. Then all I did was add about 5 drops of dye to a bowl with a splash of water.

Then just use your brush and paint your eggs until they're fully saturated to your liking. I just kept adding layer after layer until it seemed like they were no longer getting darker. I did this on some wax paper so I didn't get any dye on my counter. 

Let them sit out to dry. When your beeswax polish is cooled, you can transfer it to a container. I just used a small mason jar. It should last up to a year. 

When your eggs are dry, just rub in the beeswax polish with your hands. It will make the colors a bit more saturated and your eggs nice and shiny! 

And that's all there is to it! It took me maybe 2 hours one day and like 5 minutes the next to apply the polish. 

Since I have lots of beeswax wood polish left, I can't wait to make AJ some more wood toys!