Blue dotted egg

I saw some “dot” artwork, either painting or tiles (the tiles that are called penny rounds are totally fun) and I set to make something like that using polymer clay and an empty chicken egg shell.

Flowers and centers: polymer clay decorated egg

This egg was a variation on one done earlier, which I found both fun to make and interesting to look at. This one differs in that i used metal “flower centers” instead of polymer clay as I did on the first version pictured here. So the technique of the cut flower and the different color center remained the same, but there is space in the background (black polymer clay) on the first egg, and green mottled leaves on the second egg. Another difference is that the latter was a very tiny chicken egg, the former much larger.  This is really a practice for an ostrich egg, coming up.  Check the products to purchase it, or go to Memory-beads.

Very large (10.5 inches high) polymer clay easter egg decorated

Base was manufactured over a plastic egg (two halves) using paper mache then put back together with more paper.  Then covered with a thin layer of translucent polymer clay (still in halves) and many of the flowers were put on in a two part egg.  The total egg was put together, and cured, and then flowers and background finished.

All in all, i would make the basic halves but the first coat of polymer clay would be a single unit, since putting the halves together was a little problematic.

very large polymer clay decorated egg with flowers

Decorated egg for SARS Cov 19 easter – 2

This egg actually has a lot of detail about the coronavirus (SARS-Cov-2) including representation of the plus sense RNA wound around the nucleocapsid protein in the center of each virion, and the envelope and the membrane (with a transporter protein added as a separate color, and all the thickly placed spike proteins (S1 and S2). What it lacks, aside from being a polymer clay model, a slice through the center of a pretend virion, it does lack the hemagglutinin esterase spike proteins. So sorry for missing that. LOL.  You can purchase this egg, or one made similarly, here, by searching the products on this blog, or at this website called memory-beads.

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.