Friday Egg: Tiny Little Beauties on Location

This week I worked on doing a bunch of quail eggs to sell as ornaments at the various art shows I am doing this fall and the coming Christmas season.  Quail eggs are simply adorable.  So tiny and cute you can't help but want to pick one up and hold it.  Just like a baby!  They can be fragile because the smaller the egg the thinner the shell, and in this batch I lost two completed eggs being too rough with the paper towels rubbing the melted wax off.  Once I get some varnish on them they will be stronger.

Most are simple traditional designs without too much detail, but there are a few that are  more intricate and two lovely butterfly designs that I will have to replicate on larger eggs.

It was such a glorious day today that I took the quail eggs on a field trip!  We shot on location in my front yard, in the grass and in some small nests I have for display and even found a pecan husk (that is surely not the correct word but I don't know what is) to use as a prop.  I would love to see a whole tree of decorated quail eggs peeping out from the husks as they ripen.  It would be so pretty and would save me so much time!

Happy Beautiful Friday!

Friday Egg: A Bigger Fish Fry!

A goose egg for this Friday Egg.  As with last week's egg, I really enjoy the interlocking patterns that make up this fish design, especially the fins. I took a lot of pictures, but I don't know if you can really get a sense of how these fish bodies interlock.  I hope you can.

I started with a white goose egg, waxed all the areas that I wanted to stay white and then went through all colors light to dark.  The hot pink and orange make me happy - it makes them look like exotic skeletal tropical glow-in-the-dark fish underwater at night. Or something like that.  Each fish's inner body patterns are different, which makes it a lot more interesting for me to make since the same pattern four times can get boring.

Happy Friday!

Friday Fish Fry

An oldie but goodie today!  I love this traditional design from the Ukrainian Gift Shop's Design Book 2 and have recreated it many times.  It is such a satisfying design because everything is interconnected, creating the fish design by interlocking shapes and small details, reminiscent of Escher.  In the original, they use a brown egg, with yellow and brick dyes.  I chose to use my current favorite Golden Wheat and Turquoise on a white chicken egg, with a final color of black.

I hope you enjoy it!

Friday Egg: Heraldic Shield

This egg reminds me of a shield or coat of arms. I think it may be the diagonal element on the almond or shield shapes beneath. The colors are prefect for fall, which I hope will arrive soon because I am sick of 100 degree days.

I started with a white chicken egg, waxed all white lines, then dipped in Golden Wheat and waxed, Asparagus and waxed, then a final color of Dark Red

Happy Friday, my Lords and Ladies!

Friday Egg: Rainbow Brite!

It's 1982 all over again with this rainbow-hued chicken egg.  I started with with outlines but next time I think I will start with a red egg so I can do the true rainbow order of ROYGBIV.  

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Butterfly Tree

A beautiful blue egg swathed in lacy tendrils - it's a butterfly tree.

I started with an egg dyed Asparagus and waxed in all the stems and leaves.  After I washed it down to white with Ivory dish soap, I dyed the egg Golden Yellow for the leaves and the butterflies.  There are two lighter yellow butterflies just for fun - maybe they aren't ripe yet?  The final color is Peacock Blue.

Friday Egg: JoJo's Beautiful Creation

My daughter JoJo and I were hanging out in my studio one lazy day.  She was coloring her princess coloring pages and I was working on an egg.  She grabbed a blank egg and scribbled on it with a pencil and proudly showed me her work. I thought it might be fun to "enhance" her work so a few days later I outlined all of her pencil marks with wax and then dyed and waxed in all the different colors.  I think it is actually quite nice and I may try to incorporate the idea in a more organized fashion on some of my own eggs.

Happy Friday!