Crystal Egg Geodes

On Sunday me and the kids wanted to do more of a science project than a craft, we came across THIS from MarthaStewart.com and decided that it looked really neat.

(please note the picture below is the one from the martha stewart website)

Aren't they pretty? Ours did not turn out looking like this and I know exactly why. We did not use enough Alum powder. It is very expensive to buy. A small container here cost $5 and we would have needed four containers to do this project. However we thought that maybe we would get some results with one container.

We gathered all of our supplies

And discovered that blowing out eggs is actually kind of fun and not too messy if you do it over the kitchen sink. Cutting the egg shell in half without it cracking was the hard part. We followed the instructions, and then waited, waited and waited. While waiting we actually researched geodes to find out how they form in nature.

Finally our results.... While we didn't have the nice crystals like in the picture above you can see in the bottom of the egg shell where some crystals were starting to form. If I ever come across alum in bulk or on sale (in theory I don't see why it isn't on sale now, it is the start of canning season here after all) we will try this again to see if we get different results.