Maybe too big a task

This is a giant polymer clay egg which i am documenting as I go, as a process which needs to be refined (LOL) and may not be a realistic expectation for any sculpture with polymer clay.

It is clear that polymer clay is both heavy and expensive, and that armature is a good idea, and also that when it is cured it can bend, bulge, shrink and otherwise distort so there needs to be some kind of support for large structures.

I have tried to second guess this medium, having seen first hand that there are some areas where it is easy to “fail” but maybe not enough.

Goose egg carved and decorated with polymer clay

This goose egg came from a stash of eggs from almost half a century ago (LOL) when my kids were young and we were making all kinds of pysanky eggs. I guess this egg was saved but at this point i decided to repurpose it as a carved

and flower modeled egg.  I used a thin layer of white and translucent to cover the entire egg except where i penciled in the ovals to be carved later, and cured it, then carved out the oval areas, just pecking slowly.  The edges were sanded and then I build the outside of the egg shown here.

Then layered a thin sheet of marbleized polymer clay on the inside of the egg made with left overs from the stripes. The border was added and the egg cured again.  At this point I could not decide whether to go further or not, but see below, the edge has roses and leaves and other ornamentation.

Mosaic decorated ostrich egg: piano keys music

This is an old egg, the urethane i used on it for gloss has ambered, but i asked my sister (piano teacher, for whom i made it) to send me a couple pix just so i could remember what it looked like.   I hope i do better now…LOL. I also hope the aquathane that i use now for coating eggs doesn’t do what the old polyurethane did, but i wont keep my hopes up.   I made her a music egg using pysanky also long long ago (like three decades) as well.  The egg shells used to decorate this ostrich egg were dyed with pysanky dyes, then dried and crushed into medium size egg shell tesserae.

Polymer clay decorated egg from the 1980s

This i believe is an egg that I did long ago, with the old formula of FIMO, since it had a waxy feel to it. This is certainly not stunning, but a record of eggs that this family has made for 5 decades, and while simple is still nice. It is also from back in the day when i did not feel the need to use flower petals in everything to give them memorial-significance (LOL).

 

Music decorated ostrich egg

Ostrich egg dyed with pysanky dyes, in a musical theme and coated with urethane.

I am posting the image so that you all know that urethane is not a good covering for such projects.  After about 20 years this looks horrible, and the ambering of the whole egg is just sad.  So be aware of what products you use to coat your projects.  Also, I am not proud of the design… ha ha.   Lessons learned.

Ostrich egg mosaicked with chicken egg shells

Firtly –  the past tense of the word mosaic, is crazy…. mosaicked.  I looked it up.

Secondly – this egg is likely the first ostrich egg that I mosaicked with chicken egg shells dyed with pysanky dyes.  The chicken eggs were specifically died (just one mordant color – yellow, then the second color) for this purpose.  I found that the inside of the eggs dyed more intensely than the outer shell.. and while disappointing, I still used the pieces.

This egg was given to my mother, probably in the last century (haha… maybe 1990 or so) and went into the possession of my sister who photographed it for me.  I think in retrospect the tiny chicken egg shells needed to be organized in a more obvious design, here they seem kind of “lost” in the larger dimensions of the ostrich egg.

My wonderful christmas egg

Corin and her mom made this awesome “chocolate” and “marshmallow” christmas egg for me (2019).  How tender and soft and wonderful. It sits next to a blue bird egg and in front of other eggs from this year.  I love that one grandchild is crazy about sculpting with polymer clay.  Thank you corin and pepsi.  This egg is made over an emptied chicken egg.