Nests full of Gifts

As promised last night, here are photos of my egg cups, or rather egg nests made from salt dough.

I wanted to make napkin rings as well, but could not find a way to fold the dough around a cardboard roll without them sliding down. Read more...

Today I realised that the egg nests can also be used for napkin holders as you can see in the photo.

Simply open the napkins and roll it up from one corner, then fold in half and put it into the egg nests so that it resembles bunny ears.

Here is a close up of the nests. If you click on the photo to open it in a new page, you will see the "natural" cracks that I wrote about last night. I also used the tip of a cocktail stick to make marks on the dough so that it can resemble twigs.

The grass nests for the chicks were made from very, very thin pieces of dough rolls. I used a paint brush to moisten the nest and just laid the rolls onto the dough.

The chicks were made from two balls of dough and the wings smaller balls of dough pinched at the one side. The tip of a cocktail stick was used to make marks on the wings and also on the bigger chick.

Use this photo as a guideline to make the nests and the candle stick holder. Don't forget to moisten the edges of the salt dough with water before joining the rolls together.

I used three coats of strong black coffee to paint the nests and a cocoa solution to paint the chicks' nests. Seal with two coats of clear varnish or Modge Podge.

Tip: Use leaves or fresh herbs as further decoration and substitute the boiled eggs with chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday.

Idea: Use all the salt dough egg nests as napkin holders and serve the boiled eggs on freshly baked bread roll nests.

Last Sunday I provided a link on my ezi-edible-gifts blog to information about coffee and latte art and under the Coffee in Art section I saw the word "Arfé" which is the term artists use to describe the use of coffee in artwork. So for the past few months I have been "arfé-ing" without even knowing it!!