Homemade Confetti Eggs: Carrot Cascarones for Easter

If you need a frugal, easy craft for Easter, look no further than these handmade confetti eggs. Traditionally called cascarones, the Spanish word for eggshells, these little pockets of fun are a perfect eco-friendly family craft. Learn how to make homemade confetti eggs, naturally dyed orange, and made to look like Easter carrots for the Bunny or for the family.

More Easter Links for Later:

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What are Cascarones, or Homemade Confetti Eggs?

Although cascarones can trace their holiday lineage to Spain and even China, most Americans along the Southern border of Texas and into Mexico make them part of their Easter celebrations. Filled with confetti, and sometimes coins and treats, cascarones are made from eggshells.

Moms and grandmas hold back eggshells from weeks of breakfasts in order to make enough homemade confetti eggs. The kids help to dye and fill them, and then spend Easter cracking them over unsuspecting heads.

• The shells release confetti and laughter all at the same time!

You can craft homemade confetti eggs for any family celebration throughout the year, but they integrate naturally into Easter since they’re colored eggs. 

Naturally Dyed Homemade Confetti Eggs

To make carrot cascarones, you need a great orange dye. When you need a natural organge dye, the best one around is yellow onion skins.

Save yellow onion skins until you have about two cups and then bring them to a boil with a half gallon of water. Simmer the skins for ten to thirty minutes. The longer you simmer the skins, the deeper the color.

• However, onions skins are a strong and very reliable orange dye, so you don’t need to simmer them for hours.

Dry onion skins store well, so if you have extra, simply keep them in a container until next year. 

If you don’t each many onions, you can ask your grocer if you can simply collect extra skins from the onion bin. They throw them away anyway, so they’ll most likely let you have them for free.

• We include an onion skin dye tutorial in the tutorial section, as well as at the end of the article.

Empty Eggshells for Homemade Confetti Eggs

In order to have eggshells to make cascarones, you’ll need to clean out as many as you’d like to make homemade confetti eggs. Emptying eggshells isn’t as hard as it might sound.

• You need to start with room temperature eggs and a sharp nail. You can also buy kits with a special “drill” that makes the hole easy to open.

We have an entire article detailing how to empty, or blow out eggshells. This is a simple process and even the kids can help, although the task is better suited to your older children.

Having the kids help means you may lose a few eggs while they’re learning, but you have to “break some eggs to make an omlette”, right? These precious times laughing over broken eggshells in the kitchen together are what holidays times are all about.

In our book, Homestead Holidays, we talk a lot about how quality family life is mostly about time. Since we’re always pressed for time it seems, it’s important that we learn to enjoy the little moments. Big events like holidays and festivals are made up of small moments of preparation, all together.

Homemade Confetti Eggs: Carrot Cascarones for Easter

A simple tradition like making homemade confetti eggs for Easter together can also extend the holiday. A lot like Christmas, Easter festivities can get hyper focused on one day on the calendar.

• In order to make your own Easter decorations and candies, you’ll need to begin several weeks before the holiday itself. Which means you’ll need to get organized and make plans together, and then get working together.

Make Nautral Orange Dye for Carrot Confetti Eggs 

Yellow onions skins make a fantastic and reliable natural orange dye and they’re what we use every year. To dye your eggshells the color of carrots:

1. Place 2 handfuls of yellow onion skins into 2 quarts of water and bring to a low boil in a pot. Low boil for 30 minutes.
2. Strain out the onions skins and compost them. Place the resulting orange dye into a bowl. Add 1-2 Tbsp. of white vinegar and stir it in.
3. Place each blown egg into the bowl of dye and press into the liquid to fill the inside of the egg so it will sink to the bottom. Do this for each egg. Soak for a few minutes to an hour, depending on desired depth of color.
4. Strain out the water and leave each egg to drain and dry.

 

You can see from the pictures here the variety of orange color you can get from dipping the eggs for minutes compared to longer. The lightest eggs in these pictures were in the dye bath for about one minute. The darkest were in the dye bath for about an hour.

• You can add purple onion skins to your dye bath for a deeper, slightly reddish hue. They don’t turn purple, more like a deep amber.

Filling the Homemade Confetti Eggs

Once you’ve blown out and dyed your eggshells, turn them so the roundest end is on top. This will be the top of your carrot cascaron.

Using your nail or simply your fingernail, chip away at the initial hole until it’s a bit wider – 1/4″ should be wide enough for confetti. However, you can widen it a little further for easier filling.

• It’s easiest for me to simply gently push in the confetti with my fingers. However, you could use a tapered funnel to fill them.

If you don’t have a funnel with a small enough nose, you can make one with a single piece of paper twisted in on itself and inserted into the egg. Tailia Recipes can teach you how to make eight different homemade funnels.

• Whichever you use, pull the funnel out slowly or you’ll have a confetti cascade.

I usually fill our eggs about halfway but you can fill them as much as 2/3rds of the way. You need to leave an air gap for the best breakage and dispersion of the confetti.

Finish the Homemade Confetti Eggs

Traditional Cascarones are finished by gluing a piece of tissue paper or even a cupcake liner over the opening of the egg to close it up.

To make homemade confetti eggs that look like carrots for Easter, you’ll need to make a frilly green top to insert into the hole. This will be the top of your confetti egg.

Making a carrot top isn’t complicated, so don’t over think it. To make a top:

1. Cut two squares of green tissue paper about 4″ x 4″. Offset one of the squares and layer it on top of the other one.
2. Pinch the middle of the squares and fold up the sides.
3. Using scissors, randomly cut slits in the tops of the tissue paper. This will feather them like the top of an actual carrot.
4. Twist the base of the tissue paper leaf and insert it gently into the carrot confetti egg.

There’s no need to secure them because you’re just going to smash them or throw them. If it bugs you, though, you can use a small piece of tape, a glue dot, or some glue to secure one edge of the tissue paper carrot top.

Nestle these carrot cascarones into their own basket or into the kids Easter baskets. Go outside and enjoy the confetti egg game suggested belwo, or make up your own.

Family-Friendly Confetti Egg Game

To enjoy your homemade confetti eggs, make a game of it!

1. As you’re making the confetti eggs, create a surprise, winning egg filled with powdered sugar or a homemade Holi dry pigment. Don’t let the kids see you do this!
2. When you’re ready to have fun with the eggs, hide the cascarones the way you would regular Easter eggs. Have everyone find as many as they can; be sure the littlest children get enough for this to be fun for them, too.
3. Gather together and have everyone start smashing the confetti eggs onto each other. Basic rules include no throwing the eggs (you have to make contact), no smashing eggs into faces or other sensitive areas, etc.
4. The person who gets the cascaron with the special filling is the winner of the game and gets a special prize. However, keep smashing until all the eggs have been used up to finish the fun.

A variation of this game using a cream or homemade gelatin filled egg can create a scenario where people are actually running from each other so as not to get the squishy egg smashed onto them. The person who gets the squishy egg is still the winner, but the mess factor can make it more fun. 

Or not. If everyone is at Grandma’s for Easter dinner in their best church clothes, keep the game clean. The confetti strewn across the back lawn will be enough evidence that everyone had a great time!

Either way, homemade confetti eggs are made of natural components, so you don’t have to worry about cleaning up plastic or other fussy bits that aren’t good for pets or birds.

What’s your favorite Easter tradition? Be sure to leave a comment to share it with other readers!

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