The first thing you need to do is gather your materials. You will need the following items:

• a styrofoam egg (see here for discussion on different sizes)
• thumb tacks (see here for tack estimates)
• some kind of glue (foam glue, super glue, hot glue, etc). In a pinch, clear nail polish with substitute.
• something to stick the tacks into for painting (see ideas here)
• desired nail polish colors
• clear nail polish for a shiny top coat

Once you've gathered your materials, the first step will be to place your tacks for painting. Placing the tacks in lines will help you keep better track of which tacks have already been painted, which is especially important when you get to the final clear coat of polish.

As you can see, I used a styrofoam board for my tacks.

Make sure the tacks aren't pushed all the way into the board, so you will be able to paint their edges.

I always start by painting my tacks with a base color. This helps both with making sure th edges get painted and masking he underlying color of the tack. Since I plan to use a darker color later, I used black as my base coat.

When using white for a base coat, you may need two coats before it is opaque. Patchy base colors lead to the finished tacks not being uniform in color.

This tack is a good example of one that the edge didn't get painted. On the finished egg, tacks like these will be noticeable, so you may want to check for them and repaint them before going on to the next step.

Next, I paint one coat of my color. As you can see, the black base is still peaking through. I will need at least two layers of the color for this egg. Depending on the opaqucy of your polish, you may need several coats.

After two coats of my color, you no longer see bits of the black base coat.

If I were using a glitter, this is the point where I would add a coat of glitter polish.

Since my color is pretty enough by itself, I'm just going to use a clear top coat to give it an extra shine and help prevent the polish from chipping.

Once your tacks are ready, place the first tack in the very center of the larger end of the egg.

Now comes a crucial step: letting the tacks fully dry. Do not try to place the tacks until you can push on them with your fingernail without "denting" the polish. The polish will otherwise get messed up when you push the tacks together on the egg. The safest policy is to let the tacks dry over night. Remember, the more coats of polish you use, the longer the tacks will need to dry as well.

Place the next tack slightly overlapping the first. You want to create a circle around the middle tack.

Each tack should slightly overlap the tacks "below" it and the one to the left of it.

Once you get the first "ring" complete, place each subsequent tack in the "V" formed between the last tack and the ones below it.

Continue on in this way until you get to the top of the egg. If your lines get a little crooked, don't worry too much. They usually straighten out by the top.

Once you're down to the last couple tacks, put glue on the egg. I used foam glue. You may want to practice placing the last couple tacks before adding the glue to make sure the top looks nice.

The last tack should cover up the last few tacks to hold them all in place.

Here is the finished product.

I just received my order from TheCraftPlace.com with one of every size styrofoam egg they make. To help others in figuring out just how big of egg they want to make, I'm going through and comparing all the nine sizes.

The sizes (as stated on their site) are from left to right:

• 9 1/2" x 6 1/4"
• 6 7/8" x 4 1/2"
• 5 7/8" x 3 7/8"
• 4 7/8" x 3 1/2"
• 3 13/16" x 2 13/16"
• 3 1/16" x 2 15/16"
• 2 1/2" x 1 7/8"
• 1 15/16" x 1 1/2"
• 1 1/8" x 7/8"

I've measured each egg first from the top and all the way around the egg, then just the height, and finally the "waist" by measuring the circumference at the widest part.

These different measurements should help you figure out how your egg compares in size to the ones made by others as well as how many tacks you will need.

First is the 1 1/8" x 7/8" egg. This one is optimally sized for making a keychain. It takes about 50-60 tacks.

Next is the 1 15/16" x 1 1/2" egg. I need to get a better count of the tacks needed for this one. Current estimate is about 150-170.

2 1/2" x 1 7/8" egg. Tack estimate needed.

3 1/16" x 2 15/16". Tack estimate needed.

3 13/16" x 2 13/16". Tack estimate needed.

4 7/8" x 3 1/2" egg. This egg takes an estimated 900 tacks.

5 7/8" x 3 7/8" egg. This one takes about 1,150-1,250 tacks.

6 7/8" x 4 1/2" egg. Tack estimate needed.

9 1/2" x 6 1/4" egg. Tack estimate pending me finishing this monster.

First I take a thick flower wire and stick it through the egg/ball

To make a small tree, you will need a small styrofoam cone, glue, a mini ornament for a topper, your desired nail polish colors, something to stick the tacks into while painting, and about 200 thumb tacks.

Here are all of the materials I used.

Place the ornament with the hanging loop down. Press down until the loop goes into the styrofoam. This will help secure the topper.

The tacks barely overlap, unlike an egg where you overlap them very closely.

You want to place each tack as closely in line vertically with the one before it as possibly. I move slightly over from the edge of the previous one and try to place the point of my next tack at about the middle of the previous one.

When doing rows (as opposed to the close swirl of the tacks on an egg) you want to be very careful placing the last tack on a row. It should still be right in line with the other tacks in the row, but it will have no tacks overlapping it horizontally.

To help hold this tack in place, I put a dot of glue.

If your lines aren't perfect, don't worry. Try to keep to the same line even if one of two tacks don't fit it perfectly.

Chunky glitter polish can make a beautiful egg, but since each tack is so small it can be hard to get glitter from your brush onto the tack.

I've been wanting to use this Frozen inspired polish from Five Below. This is Elsa.

Since this is a clear-base polish, I started by painting my tacks with a base coat. Some of my tacks will be blue and the others white.

One coat didn't completely hide the silver of the tacks. So I did one more coat.

I let the tacks dry awhile so I wouldn't smudge the base coat when placing my glitter.

Next I painted the glitter polish directly onto a makeup sponge. This soaks up the extra clear polish so you can put more glitter on the tack than painting the tack directly.

Once the glitter is on the sponge, lightly dab it into the tacks.

I followed up the sponge with a light coat of the polish with the brush to get a nice coating over th glitter then followed up with a top coat.

Finally, I assembled it on a styrofoam ball to make an ornament.

When placing tacks into the styrofoam, you want to overlap them to both hold the previous tacks in place and to hide the underlying styrofoam.

When I place my tacks, I put the next tack in the very corner of the "V" formed by the previous tacks.