Good Quote

"One pearl is better than a whole necklace of potatoes."

-Etienne Decroux

Friday Egg

Six stars, four on the sides and one on top and bottom.  I started with a white egg dyed golden yellow, then washed back down to white, through light turquoise, turquoise, light purple and dark purple.  I like the combination of colors here - they are strong but not in competition with each other.  Hope you enjoy this picture heavy Friday Egg!

Friday Egg on Sunday

Oops!  I thought I had scheduled this post for Friday, but I need to learn more about scheduling because it did not post.  We just got back from a weekend in the hill country, so here is the belated but heartfelt Friday Egg!

Another rainy day garden, this time with blue poppies!  I am really enjoying this design. Blue poppies for this chicken egg, with a lovely olive acid green for the stems and a dark gray background. Poppies in the rain.

Our first tomato!

Isn't it pretty?  This is the first tomato of the season from our heirloom tomato plants that we bought from a vendor at the Hope Farmer's Market.  Tastes just like a tomato should, with that lovely sweet and savory homegrown flavor.  Heaven with sea salt.  We may have to have a tomato party because at last count, we had over one hundred green tomatoes.  I live in fear of squirrels now.  Does anyone know if the flavor is as good if you take a tomato off the plant while it is still half green?  

Friday Egg

A contemporary egg today, in pinks and grays.  This is my "hollyhocks" design. I have been enjoying making this is different colorways all week.  I started with a dyed-black egg  for the main outlines, then etched it with vinegar to white.  I outlined the center petals in white, then dyed the egg dark red.  After filling in the central circle, I rinsed the color to get the medium pinkish-red for the middle circle, and then rinsed again to get the outer lighter pink circle.  Next I worked on the stems.  I decided to do purple and teal - I have a tendency to always choose green for stems and leaves and that is just a bit boring and predictable.  I like how you can see the red outlines even on the stem - I really only notice that etching edge when I use red.  I will have to keep an eye out and see if other colors leave a trace on the wall of the etch.

I like the way it turned out - it looks like hollyhocks on a stormy day.

And here's a few photos of the other colorways:

And all of them together; a little flower garden for this lovely early summer Friday.

Friday Egg

Aqua, purple and blue quilt design.  I've been doing this pattern a lot lately, haven't I?  I think I like it because of the combinations I can get between curves and straight lines.  It's rhythmic without being boring.  

I started with a brown egg, as you can see.  Etched it down to a lighter brown with a vinegar wash, then dyed it aqua, cobalt blue, and light blue.  I etched it again in vinegar, thinking that a light background would be nice, but the darker dyes kept leaking out of the pores of the eggshell after etching.  It sometimes happens that way.  If the egg is a commission and I need a certain combination of colors, I can combat it in a few ways.  I can etch it, dry it quickly and slap wax on it really quickly to try to keep the color from leaking out. This usually only works if there are small areas to cover.  The areas on this egg were too large for that to work.  Sometimes I can let an egg dry out thoroughly, then try to etch it again in vinegar.  That usually works the best, but is much more time consuming.  Since this was just for fun, I decided that a purple background would be perfectly fine. 

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg

This week is a delicate little floral creation that reminds me of a tea-dyed calico print. I started with a brown chicken egg, approximately 2 1/2 inches tall. Once all my wax outlines were done, I etched the natural brown color off of the shell with a vinegar soak of just a few minutes. It was a shorter soak than I planned because as sometimes happens, some of the wax lines had not adhered correctly to the shell and started to float off into the vinegar thereby obviously negating the masking effect of the wax.  You can see in the top left corner of the first photo that one of the side of the leaf is much lighter - that is where the wax didn't adhere well enough.  I took it out, dried it off, and re-waxed the lines that were gone. Rather than take the color all the way down to white, which was my original intent, I decided to go for a softer tea-dyed effect. I used bright green for the leaves and then dipped directly into maroon for the tiny flowers. I rinsed off the maroon with water until it was a lighter pastel and waxed over that color for the larger flowers. Since all the wax had been either re-drawn or just drawn over when I was working with the other colors, I thought it would be safe to try to etch the background down to a lighter cream color and it worked out just fine. I hope you like it!

Happy Friday, everyone!