Which came first: The chicken in the egg
or the chicken on the egg?

Playing with 'The Incredible Edible Easter Egg Designer'

How to Paint Easter Eggs on Your Computer! (Includes Usual Bonus Cliche Egg Puns)

By Chris Dunmire, Eggstraordinairily Fertile in Imagination

This being Easter week and all, you might enjoy playing with this neat little online virtual Easter Egg decorating application I found through incredibleegg.org called the Incredible Egg Designer. It's free and fun, and VERY easy to use, so you needn't be a creative chicken or walk on techie eggshells to enjoy it.

As you can see from my eggsterpiece above, I've already dabbled with the app a bit and plan to get back to playin' after I write this blog. Believe me, engaging in this creative fun is much healthier for me than falling into temptation in the Easter candy aisle... I don't know why, but those chocolate rabbits and peanut butter/chocolate eggs have a way of hopping off the shelf and following me home. I don't mind that so much, it's just when they show up on the scale...

Back to the app: The Incredible! Easter Egg Designer allows you to decorate a plain white egg "canvas" (blank Easter egg) with both pre-loaded and free-form options for egg painting, backgrounds, and accessories. You can even upload your own unique egg designs, photos, illustrations, and graphics (JPG or PNG format) from your computer to create personalized egg-sterpieces to send to your friends or yourself (an option you don't have to choose, but it's there if you want to).

I'll admit, the cool add-a-shape, backgrounds, and accessories are fun to mess around with, but when I saw the "Upload a Picture" option, my creative mischievousness engaged to full throttle. EGGsplosive Nit-Witty ideas rolled around in my noggin' until I decided to see what a simple chicken-n'-egg illustration would look like wrapped around the egg shell. And wa-la! That's how my chicken in an egg on an egg was laid.

Quick Tutorial: Upload Your Own Eggsterpiece!

You can make an eggsterpiece with your own uploaded artwork too — it's easy. Here's how I got my chicken in the egg on the egg:

Step 1: I launched the free The incredible! Easter Egg Designer application in my Web browser and clicked past the instruction screen to the blank white egg canvas and tool palette you start with above.

Notice the row of green buttons on the right side (Add a cool shape; Paint on your egg; Add a background; etc.). The last button right before the Pick a color swatch is Upload a picture.

Step 2: I had one of my personal illustrations ready to upload from my computer: this cute little yellow chick coming out of a broken egg shell. To get the chicken on the egg from my computer to the inside of the blank egg canvas, I simply clicked the Upload a picture button and followed the prompts to instruct the egg decorator app where to grab the image from my hard drive.

(Note: You may have to prep your art in a photo/graphics program before or in tandem with Step 1 depending on how eggspert you want the final product to turn out. Not a problem — I was using Photoshop and kept tweaking things (size, color profiles) in between saving and re-uploading to get it just right. The egg decorating app has a handy Start Over option you can use if your uploaded artwork goes through several revisions. Just be sure your artwork is in a JPG or PNG format with an RGB color profile.)

Step 3: Once my chick was uploaded and showed inside the egg shell, I used my cursor to adjust/move it to a satisfactory centered position. And that's all!

By the way, when you're finished decorating your egg, you have the option to enter two e-mail addresses in the fields below the egg window — yours and a recipient's — to share your egg creation with a friend (via e-mail and embedded in a promotional markety wrapper from Incredible Egg as a viral link spreader.)

Step 4: Curious to see what happens, I sent my egg to myself (I put my e-mail address in both fields). A message shortly arrived in my inbox with the subject line: You've been sent an Incredible egg (see the screen shot above). It displayed my email address as the sender and proudly displayed my chick egg all gallery-like.

I must say, this is a pretty eggceptional little art tool full of delightful surprises if you want to do a little egg play. Don't be afraid of blank canvas gridlock with this one — once you click on any one of the tools and start playing, you'll soon find yourself en-shelled in creative fun. If you make an egg with your own art added like I did, I'd love to see it! •

© 2011 Chris Dunmire. All rights reserved.