Time to get festive for Easter break! Follow these foolproof steps to create a beautiful, unique Easter egg.

Step 1: Acquire a hard-boiled egg

There are multiple ways to find yourself a hard-boiled egg on Tulane’s campus. If you go to Bruff Commons for breakfast, go to the scrambled egg section and ask for a hard-boiled egg or two. Skip the salad bar, as those eggs are already peeled and you’ll put yourself in a messy situation.

Too late to hit Bruff breakfast? Go to Mac Mart and pick up a carton of overpriced eggs. If you go this route, however, know you’ll also need to find someone with a pot. This is the hard part, but you do have a few options.

You can post in the Facebook group and wait for no one to respond, or text in your floor GroupMe, and also wait for no one to respond. Our advice? Bypass these fruitless attempts altogether and knock on the door of whoever lives next to the kitchen in your dorm. They are bound to have some cooking supplies.

Once you have the pot, you can make your hard-boiled eggs. If you do not know how to do this, be innovative and look it up on YouTube. But seriously …  you should be able to figure out how to boil water.

WARNING: Do not attempt to hard-boil your eggs using a microwave. Unless you have a state-of-the-art microwave at your disposal, the egg is most likely going to explode. This will wreck your fun egg decoration process and cause your room to reek for the rest of the semester.

Step 2: Look around for supplies

The easiest way to dye eggs vibrantly is to use vinegar-based colors. There are other ways, however, to use supplies you might already have in your dorm room.

If you have fruit juices in your fridge, the acid will cause the color to stay on the egg and result in a brighter dye – we recommend cranberry juice and orange juice. For a little flare, you could try cran-orange. If you’re short on juice, coffee also works well. For each of these, fill a cup with the liquid and put the hard-boiled egg in. The longer it sits, the more it will absorb the dye, thus the more vibrant the color will be.

Another method is to put foaming shaving cream on a plate and then drop a few squeezes of food coloring on it. You can mix the food coloring around with a toothpick into different designs. Next, roll the egg in the mixture and set it aside to dry. Wait a few minutes and then wipe off the shaving cream.

The simplest of all ways is to use Sharpies or highlighters to color the egg. It might feel like you are back in fourth grade, but it is definitely fun.

Step 3: Decoration time

After the colors are set, it is time to decorate. This requires more creative thinking, but Tulane students are nothing if not resourceful.

The obvious answer: Glitter! This is can be in the form of leftover glitter on your floor from Mardi Gras or glitter-infused makeup. Speaking of makeup, eyeliner can be used for lines and designs, and brow pencils can be used for those specific details.

If you want to put a lot of effort in, you can cut out patterns in the papers from last semester’s notebooks and decoupage them on your egg. Notebook paper is thin enough to stick nicely, and someone on your floor is bound to have glue.

You can also use leftover tattoos from festivals to wrap around your egg, as well. These tips will not only level up your Easter egg game, they’ve serve as a stress relievers while you’re procrastinating on final papers.

Step 4: Send a picture to your mom, and eat your Easter eggs!