Easy Opening Eggs (Yellow and White Sold Separately)

While cutting some eggs with my Dremel - which, I must confess, I often do - came to me an idea.

There's everywhere on food retailing products, easy opening tabs / peel off_s / tear off_s..

It sometimes get ridiculous on products that are already easy to open. ( I think about a cereal box or flour package )

What if we push it a bit further?

Then an egg sounds as a perfect candidate for really easy opening product (by itself, I mean).

So let's do a pure food retailing easy opening egg!

To follow this instructable you'll need.

An egg. (or more if you break one)
Some small candy Easter eggs
A transparent plastic sheet (e.g. for overhead projector)
Super Glue

Tools will be:

A Dremel with a cutting disk
A string or thick thread
A marker (permanent one are good)
Sand paper

Step 1: Find Where to Cut Your Egg

While the egg can be cut anywhere in two,

I prefer cutting it vertically in Half

To find the plane which cuts the egg this way:

take your rope.
Make a slipknot. (tight non as loose as the picture shows)
Tie it around the egg, and tighten it a bit.
Slide it to fit the top and bottom of the egg.
As it is the longer path, the rope should tighten never come loose.
Check your path makes straight lines.
Use your marker to soak the rope.
Let it dry.

You're done!
a perfect line around your egg.

Step 2: Cut Your Egg and Prepare Edges

Gently erode the eggshell with the cutting disk.

Only advise is to take time and be delicate.

When you have emptied your egg, wash and dry it.

Then polish edges on a very even sand paper surface so they're regular, plane and smooth.

Again, only advise is to take time and be delicate.
Making big moves and not pressing hard helps a lot.

Step 3: Cut and Glue Some Plastic

Our Easy opening egg needs it's dose of plastic, which we're about to add.

Cut a strip of plastic in the transparent sheet.
It's approximatively 1.5 egg-width large and 3 egg-length long. (see picture 3)
Fold it in two so eggshells will face one an other
Draw the footprint of an egg.
Remove the inside allowing a margin for gluing.
Do it on both sides (easy because it's superposed)
Remove permanent marker if you can (with acetone mine is not so permanent !!!)
Glue eggshells on the plastic one side at time.
Be careful, you only have one try as Super glue is quite fast on eggshell and plastic.
You should now have some castanets !

Step 4: Filling the Egg

This is the first version of the easy opening egg, an Easy Opening Easter Egg

Then:

Grab some sugar Easter eggs
Fill your egg and verify it closes.
Never Press shells together. If it doesn't close, remove some sugar eggs.
Once it's ok, Glue and close the filled egg.
Let it dry. (you can maintain a small pressure so the two sides are perfectly stuck together.)
Remove the corner of one plastic side to make the easy handling part.

Step 5: Finish the Packaging

To be a perfect product, it needs a label and a bar code!

Lets do it.

I made the label with Power point, and the bar code on this site http://www.barcodesinc.com/generator/index.php

Then print and glue.

Pictures tell the story.

To make it MORE REAL, Punch a hole like if your egg came of the shelves!

Step 6: Yellow and White Sold Separately

Yellow and White Sold Separately is an other Kind of Easy Opening Egg.

I guess you've understood what it's about!

The process is the same, with some exceptions.

You'll make two plastic strips
Plastic strips will be emptied on one side only.
A great care will be required to close the 1/2-eggs
It'll be filled with aqueous material (white or yellow) which shall not spill on glued surfaces, especially when the upper plastic sheet covers the liquid.

Otherwise, it's the same, make a hole and put on shelves ready to be sold!