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| Cleaning the eggs in a 50/50 Vinegar/Water bath with a good stiff brush. The eggs are straight from the farm after being emptied an rinsed, I asked because I wanted to make sure they weren't cleaned with any chemicals. So they have to be cleaned of all the dirt and "farm gunk" before they can be decorated. The egg is halfway filled with sand and sealed so I can make it stand at odd angles. |
Layout of materials including: visual references, pencils, candles, beeswax, kistas of various sizes, q-tips, dye. You can also see the foam template I made for Sven's egg's chain. |
An enormous rubber band was used to divide the egg in half and each half into quarters. The best way to make relatively straight lines without using a lathe. |
Same rubber band used to make the textbox space that divides the 2 devices. |
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| Again with the huge rubber band(I swear it was created with Ostrich eggs in mind). This time used to create the checky pattern for the Queen of An Tir's arms. The boxes you see in the are each made up of 4 rubber band squares. This also created a graph wich was immensly helpful in drawing the lion. |
I used graphite transfer paper to write the text on the egg. This method came about after aggonizing about how do do the lettering with perfect spacing on Sven's egg. I actually did the text on his egg last and had to sand down all the color drips in order to get the letters white again. Once it clicked to use transfer paper and have a font do my letter spacing for me the hardest task was easy. |
Another shot of the text. If you haven't noticed the gloves by now I'll point them out. The oils in our skin can affect the coverage of the dye and create splotchy surfaces, so care has to be taken to touch the eggs as little as possible after they are washed. |
I know this is a bad picture, but it's the only one I could find of the "white stage" on Signy's side. I had to redraw the bend in the middle at a less steep angle to give enough space on the top and bottom for decent looking lions. I think the gum eraser that I used may have affected the later dyes epecially the yellow bend. |
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| Here is the white parts being waxed on the Queen side. I left some space around the tail and wreath to make sure I was satisfied with how they came out. I ended up redrawing the wreath before I was done with the white.....once it's waxed you can't go back. |
Here all the white is done and the yellow dye has been applied. Normally I would submerge the entire egg in dye, but I don't have enough to cover an entire Ostrich egg. Also traditionally eggs would be patterned using primarily different shades of the same hue, like yellow > orange > pink > red > brick > black each color building on the last with colors outside the chosen hue being added in small spots early in the white or yellow stage so they don't affect later colors or be affected by previous colors. It's wonderful to dye your red egg blue and get a brilliant shade of purple. Also when replicating an image such a a device it's out of the question to stick to just blues or reds and exclude all others. |
Ok this is a good one. They yellow has been dyed and waxed and the green dyed. Here you can see what it takes to make black detail lines and outlines. Remember black must be your last color as it over takes all the other colors, so anything you want black must be left unwaxed. So to get a black line you must apply wax on either side of the line that you want black, and pray you don't accidentally cross the line. You're not trying to color within the lines, you're coloring to make the lines. |
Here is the Queen side showing the green spot dyes for the wreath. You can see all the places where the yellow didn't listen to me and decided to run down the curve of the egg, it's good that yellow is a decent base for all colors I use...it doesn't turn blue into green with these dyes. You can also see my "straight" black lines dividing the checky background. |
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| This si the Queen side showing the green is done and the red has been applied and waxed, you can see the details, especially on the roses of the wreath where I intend black to fill in and define petals. Also the nails, toungue, eye and crown are done. |
Signy's arms showing the red is done. Tongues and roses, not too hard because they're so small you can't get much detail in there. |
And the final color black is applied, it looks a little uneven, but melting the wax off and the finish usually evens the black out pretty good. The next step is the most exciting, melting the wax off and watching the colors just burst to life. I used an embossing tool as the egg is too big to stick in the oven, it would cool off before I could get an eighth of the wax off, and melting over a candle would take much too long and you risk getting discoloration if you get it too close to the flame.
| The other side with the black done, you can just see the colors peeking through the dark wax. After the wax is melted off, the sand it removed from the egg and details like the white around the hole in the egg are touched up with a sharpie. Then the egg is finished with some spray polyurethane....although this is a bit tricky as sharpies are not permanent when mixed with polyurethane, I found this out the hard way on Sven's egg. |
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| So the final product showing Signy's arms. The yellow is splotchier than I would have liked and some of my sharpie touch ups on the wreaths ran a little as my first coat of polyurethane was a little too heavy. |
The Queen's arms final product. I am very pleased with how well this turned out |
Sven's arms, There's nothing really bad I can say about this, I am very pleased with how his egg turned out. |
The King's arms on the opposite side of Sven's egg. The only thing about this is I was too eager to finish it that I melted the wax before properly washing my hands and still had slightly damp black dye on my fingers, so there's 4 faint fingerprints on the left side, but you can't really see them unless you know they're there. |
