Antigua | Carol King: drawing, painting, complaining

Sketch of the view from our room in Antigua at the St. James’s Club

The Husband and I had had enough of the polar vortex, the cold, the snow, the winter! A trip to the tropical Isle of Antigua helped rid us of our winter blues. The sketch above was done from the balcony of our room. Full disclosure, it’s hard to sketch when there were never ending rum punches!

We were lucky enough to get away for a week and had a grand time. However, before we left my sister had an Easter Egg coloring day with some friends and me. We decided to try these silk dyed eggs which one of us had seen on pinterest.

We’d done decoupaged easter eggs, seen here: https://carolking.wordpress.com/2010/04/10/decoupaged-easter-eggs-and-a-vision-in-pink/ This process was a little more time consuming. One needs 100% silk ties. Alice’s husband supplied some and the thrift store supplied more.

Here are the instructions:

Cut up the silk ties in squares. Make sure they are large enough to wrap around the eggs.
Wrap the egg with the silk square, making sure the right side is against the egg.
Tie tightly using a twist tie
Wrap the silk wrapped tie with another square of white cotton cloth.
Tie tightly again using the twist tie.
Put the eggs in a pot of water. Make sure you have enough water to cover the eggs.
Add approx 3 tablespoons of white vinegar
Bring water to a boil and then cook the eggs as if to hard-boil.
Remove the eggs from the water and let cool.
Unwrap the eggs and stare at your beautiful eggs.

Some notes:

It’s not recommended to eat the eggs since we don’t know the safeness of the silk dye.
My friend Jean blew the eggs out first and then did the process above so she could save the eggs forever!
Silk scarves and blouses might work too. If you try it let me know.
The tighter you wrap the square of silk the better the designs transfer. We were ok with the marbleized effect rather than having a perfectly transferred pattern.

Here are our results: