Category: Custom decorated eggs

This is a polymer clay egg: a base layer of translucent, and then a cane made with translucent filled with brown pine needles chopped up, granite grey polymer clay and black polymer clay filled with brown pine needles (these were from my cousins property…made as a keepsake about him).  The pine needles can be seen, and the colors are like the mountains that contain lava nearby.

I googled granite, thinking i might find a match, instead was totally blown away by pictures of orbicular granite.  Now that is some natural geometry, absolutely breathtaking in rhythm and repetition.

I used a cockatiel egg to make a base, and scored the diameter (circumference or equator — which ever you want to call it) before I cured it.  After curing I used a blade to score down to the egg and through the egg shell (which is easy since the cockatiel egg is very thin). I sanded the two halves and built a little mound for each half (poking several holes in it with an eye pin as a holder for the flowers built and added later. I cured the flowers (with an eye pin as the stems, then clipped the eye pins off to the height I wanted and inserted them into the pre-made holes in the mounds.  Then i built up the grass and leaves the clay onto the eye pin stems, then cured the egg again.  I did use varathane as a gloss.

All in all it is not “sterling” but kind of fun, and experimenting is the best part of the whole clay-egg-thing.

I thought when i began this egg that it would be really special, well not so, at least there are about 4 major flaws…as you can see in these photos. The point of the egg was to make translucent stained glass flower look with a cross at the back (inside) of the egg, which i almost pulled off, but not quite. I used the same cane that i had used for the previous blue flower translucent egg, just to test the black fimo as a “leading line” effect for making a stained glass appearance.

1. i do wish the translucent premo clay was a little more “translucent”   I know there are better clays for this purpose, and have not invested in them to compare. I know that Blue Bottle Tree has done some studies  (this woman, if i may say so, is really a scientist, her approach works well for testing) on translucent clay so there are better clays for what i would have liked to achieve out there for me to play with.
2.  I left a big gouge in the top part of this egg, just careless, and in a hurry, as i always am.
3.  I should have left more “light” space in the open side of the egg…
4. and as usual, a little more sanding would have worked wonders.
5. when i soaked out the calcium from the egg shell (took a day, and several refills with vinegar) i also sanded the inside, but I see on the right hand photo there is a little round spot covering a flower where the calcium still persists…. I will chip and sand that away.
6. And worst of all, for some reason the side of the egg looks saggy? hmm  no clue, as the egg shell over which i built this polymer clay egg certainly did not have a saggy part.

But here are some pix anyway. I never like to give up on a project, and also need the visual reminders of previous mistakes so i am more apt to avoid making them again. Right and left photos are looking into the egg, middle photo is from the back.

THis is the fourth egg of the “cut out” style, I am improving. I love the translucency of this particular set of canes and the simple little scalloped border. Still not perfect, and also i had to repair the bottom since i forgot (once again) to poke an air hole in the bottom of the clay that was pressed over the hole in the egg where i emptied the contents. Air expands when it gets hot… LOL..i forget that.
Again, to remove the calcium of the egg shell, after curing the clay i punched out the sides of the real egg, and soaked in white vinegar for several hours, then sanded the interior.

This polymer clay egg is hollow, and the light can shine through to the interior. I used some translucent polymer clay and some colored clay and made a daisy cane which i applied to the exterior of a whole chicken egg (well, emptied but a whole shell).  After curing i punched out the uncovered egg shell and removed the rest of the shell in white vinegar (many hours) and sanded the interior of the polymer clay (and exterior). This one is coated with varathane.  I am having fun with this technique, and the sky is the limit.

 

While i was looking at previous eggs i noticed that the translucent polymer clay was really interesting when molded around a shape and then the mold removed, as happened with the large paper egg covered with polymer clay HERE. I decided to experiment a little on partially open eggs that had enough contact points to stand alone when the egg shell was removed, and came up with this daisy egg. I think it turned out kind of interesting, and I followed it up with several more.

This too is just a fun, nonsense polymer clay egg. I had made the black and white flag stripes cane for my grandson, and had some left over. The egg is quite small, originally probably one from the “medium” size store bought eggs. The jumbo eggs, when used with polymer clay can turn out to be really quite big so purposefully I chose smaller eggs.

It has been only a couple weeks since i made this silly egg
with polymer clay. At this point it was such a “non” for me that I cannot remember over what object I pressed the clay. I doubt it was an egg, but it must have been, as i would not have used a large wooden bead for this. But i post it just for fun.