Last one to craft is a rotten egg!

February 23, 2009 9:11 PM

You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, and you can’t buy eggs without winding up with egg cartons. What will you do with the empty cartons? Well, you could make a string of flower lights, lamps, or a pendant light. If you refrained from drinking too much egg nog over the holidays, you might be lightweight enough to make use of a egg carton seat. This company makes footstools out of egg cartons.

You also could make a truck or a T-Rex costume for your kid. You could make a bulletin board, get organized or store small objects, use the carton as a paint palette, or turn the carton into a loom for weaving scarves. You could start some tomato or coriander and chives seeds for spring, or use the cartons as molds for concrete. If you’re really desperate to improve the sound quality in your studio or to find something to wear to the ball, egg cartons are one option. You can also make sculpture or the Mona Lisa. Or, like Dutch artist Enno de Kroon, you can make original paintings using egg cartons as your canvas. This article has some other ideas for how to re-use egg cartons. And now you can get cracking crafting.

posted by orange swan (15 comments total)

You keep making these awesome posts. I keep favoriting them, and I never get caught up reading all of them, because I get distracted by making something! Thank you --I guess-- for adding to my list of things to read and do. :)

Currently, my egg cartons have potato starts in them sitting under a grow light.
posted by Orb at 10:32 PM on February 23

I am saving mine to dampen sound in my studio. It takes a while to save enough to get the job done, but not too long now ...
posted by krinklyfig at 10:33 PM on February 23

I'm building a life-size sex doll out of egg cartons. I'll post instructions soon.
posted by orme at 11:02 PM on February 23

I'm using mine to start tomato seeds right now, but thanks for all these other good ideas.
posted by bradbane at 11:18 PM on February 23

Hurray for reuse and crafts!

I'm lucky enough to live in a town with both a food co-op and a farmer's market that sells 'em (eggs from chickens who got to frolick) in bulk.

I wonder, do chain grocery stores sell eggs in bulk?
posted by aniola at 11:32 PM on February 23

Is there a level of bulk eggs that's packaged differently than Costco does it? They do sheets of egg-carton, stacked. I think theirs is 6x5x2. I would think that even in larger quantities you'd still need about as much packaging material to protect the eggs from messy doom.
posted by aubilenon at 12:06 AM on February 24

I eat a heck of a lot of eggs -- anyone needs egg cartons, I'm your man, be glad to send them when I get a hatful of them, they weigh almost nothing, I just recycle them now (paper). Send mefi-mail if interested...
posted by dancestoblue at 2:00 AM on February 24

I give mine to neighbors with chickens who reuse them as egg cartons.
posted by MtDewd at 3:58 AM on February 24

Orange swan, if I could have one pony request, it would be to hotlist individual posters -- starting with your crafty awesomeness. Thanks. Love the T-Rex head.

I, um, use my cartons for eggs as the girls produce a dozen every day. MtDewd, you are a thoughtful neighbor.

Orb, potato starts? Could you drop me a mefi-mail with the details, please?
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:45 AM on February 24

The brunch restaurant I work at uses about 20 dozen eggs a day. The local farmers that bring us eggs reuse the cartons, so we save them. The ones where eggs have broken that have been yolked up are supposed to be thrown out, but usually someone that works there collects them and soundproofs a house for band practice.

I've never thought about it but 20 dozen eggs is a lot...
posted by schyler523 at 6:00 AM on February 24

I'm using mine to start tomato seeds right now, but thanks for all these other good ideas.

We recently switched grocery stores and Harris Teeter sells 2 dozen eggs in clear plastic-- the moment I got one home I immediately thought "Little tiny greenhouse." I've got several filled with flower seeds. (Our local hardware store offers very cheap vegetable seedlings in pony packs so all of my seed starting space is given over to flowers.)
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 6:29 AM on February 24

Orb, potato starts? Could you drop me a mefi-mail with the details, please?

No they can't. They've got to share the goodness right here, no fair hogging it.

I use egg cartons to hold my minitures for Warhammer 40K. The foam ones are the best for this as they don't give off lint. However the paper ones are both a touch larger and handle modification for oversize minitures better and most of the lint can be surpressed with a coat of clear spray paint. Way cheaper than dedicated army boxes.

As a bonus they are perfectly sized to fit inside a plastic milk crate. Makes me wonder which came first; milk jug, milk crate, or egg carton.
posted by Mitheral at 2:14 PM on February 24

OK, OK, I'll share right here! ;)

My family calls it the Great Potato Experiment. I'm trying to recreate the way I used to see my grandfather give his potatoes a head start before planting in the ground.

What I have done is take some of the paper type egg cartons, placed them in a cookie sheet with sides on it. In one, I put just a little potting soil in the bottom of each egg crater. I was never nosy enough as a child to pick one of my grandfather's potato starts up to see if there was dirt in the carton or not, so in the other, I put no soil at all. I had some organic potatoes from a source I believe to be as disease free as possible, so I didn't bother with buying potato starts. I rinsed off the potatoes (in case there was any growth inhibitor on them. I doubt it, but you never know.). Supposedly, larger ones could be cut with at least two eyes on each piece, but mine are all quite small, so I left them whole. My grandfather always left all of his whole no matter the size. I don't know if it makes a difference or not.

In each egg crater, I put a potato with the stem end down (or cut side, if you cut them), barely touching the dirt in the ones with dirt. I sprayed the whole thing with water until the egg carton was moist, but not sopping wet. Then [more experimentation] I covered half of each egg carton with peat moss, leaving only the end of the potato with eyes exposed, and put them under a full-spectrum fluorescent lamp in a warm location. Sometimes, my grandfather used peat moss, and sometimes he didn't. I don't know why, and it may have just been that some years he didn't have peat moss. He also always just put them out on the porch in a warm and sunny location, but I have a resident opossum, who I am certain would think they were dinner.

When the carton feels a little dry, I pour some water into the cookie sheet and give the surface of the potatoes and peat moss a little spritz too. I don't know that the watering is necessary, but considering my grandfather's were outside in the elements getting rained on when it rained and watered when he watered the plants near them, I'm trying to recreate that as close as possible.

So far, it seems to be working faster than just letting them sit around waiting for them to sprout. The potatoes have been in this set-up for about three days, and all of the eyes have begun to sprout. Most of them have just today started to show signs of leaves forming. I'm going to leave them this way until they have a few actual leaves, and then plant them as I saw my grandfather do ... in a hole, with just a bit of dirt over the potato part, and then as the leaves and stems grew, he kept adding more dirt until it was level with the rest of the garden.

He always had the most lush and productive potatoes (and tasty), and he never bought potato starts. He always just planted whatever my grandmother had gotten from the store for cooking. He always, always started them in paper egg cartons, and his potatoes were always ready for eating earlier than his neighbor's. I'm just hoping to be half as successful at this gardening this as he was. :D

And the moral of this story, boys and girls, is ... if you see your elders doing something strange, ask them what they are doing and why. It'll save you from having to experiment when you suddenly decide later in life you want to do that very same thing.
posted by Orb at 6:39 AM on February 25 [2 favorites]

Thanks Orb. It's still a bit early to be starting them here though I'm definately giving this technique a try in a few weeks. Might keep more of the crop from getting eaten by wire worms.

The planting part is fairly convential. We normally just lay seed potatoes which we've cut in half on our freshly tilled earth and then hill over them. Then every week to ten days we hoe up a bit more dirt covering a bit more stalk each time. It keeps the potatoes well drained because they are above grade and the tubers are easier to harvest when you don't actually have to dig down into the ground.
posted by Mitheral at 9:11 AM on February 25

This is actually going to be my second attempt at getting potatoes in the ground. The first one was consumed by the previously mentioned opossum. He leaves stuff that has leaves on it alone, but a potato under an inch of dirt is, well, opossum dinner.

I've been wondering about the hill vs. ditch method of planting. A lot of people here in Texas do the ditch method, and while no one can tell me why they do it that way, I suspect it might have something to do with the high heat we'll be getting very soon (drainage is rarely a problem around here -- very sandy soil). Well, high heat we are already getting. It's 86ºF on my shady front porch right now. I can't imagine summer is going to be better. In fact, I'm dreading the summer heat. Though it will make for a nice long growing season, I just hope it doesn't fry my whole garden.
posted by Orb at 2:17 PM on February 25