Scrap N Grow

Happy Easter! I have a fun project to share with you today…decorated ostrich eggs. A generous client of mine recently gifted me a few dozen ostrich eggs after she found out that I was a mixed media artist. I have to admit that ostrich eggs are a totally new concept to me. For up until I received these eggs, I had never seen one in person, nor realized how large, and how hard the egg shell is.
Throughout my client’s dental appointment, she told me that she used to paint the exterior of the eggs and gift them to her family and friends. She also carved into others and created miniature scenes for the various holidays. Her ideas kick started my brainstorming of potential ideas.  While I had some initial thoughts regarding potential projects, I decided to perform a Google image search for ostrich eggs and was completely blown away from several of the returned results. There are some very talented egg artisans out there. While several eggs were decoratively painted, there were several more that were intricately sculpted. I thought the idea to paint the outer shell was an ideal place to start.

Ostrich Easter Eggs

So today is my first project ever created using an ostrich egg. I wanted to keep it relatively simple. Because the outer shell of the egg is quite slippery and feels almost glass like, I started by using some medium grit sandpaper to roughen up the outer surface so that paint would adhere. I then applied 2 coats of Gesso art medium to prime the egg for paint. Afterwards, I applied 2 coats of Claudine Hellmuth’s Studio Paint to each eggs. Next, I cut out my desired images using my Cricut expression and the Damask Cricut cartridge. I thought I would experiment to determine which material would best adhere to the egg’s surface. So in each corner of my mat, I placed a different surface: a piece of Cricut vinyl, a piece of heavy weight decorative cardstock, a piece of lightweight decorative paper, and in the last corner, a plain piece of smooth white card stock. All surfaces cut well at 5 inches. I chose to use the purple vinyl image for my yellow egg. It adhered well and easily. For the blue egg, I initially fussed with the heavy weight decorative cardstock and this proved to be quite fussy and was to stiff to bend to the contour of the egg, so I set that aside and picked up the lightweight decorative card stock. This worked well, I applied the decorative cutout without any problem using a thin coat of matte Mod Podge and let dry. And lastly, for the green egg, I really wanted to paint on it but did not wish to take the labor intensive time to trace the image onto the egg and then paint. The image is quite intricate and would be time restrictive. Instead, I decided to paint the smooth white card stock with a complementary color using again Claudine Hellmuth’s Studio paint. This painted well. Afterwards, I decided to try a different adhesive and used Americana’s Decoupage Medium. This was a lighter weight medium compared to Mod Podge and I felt as though I had to fuss more to ensure the decorative cut was burnished well onto the egg, but it did adhere well. Overall, I am egg-cited and pleased with my initial egg-periment and have generated some new ideas for other projects.

Supplies Used: Ostrich Eggs, Claudine Hellmuth Studio Paint, Cricut Die cutting Machine, Damask Cricut Cartridge, Provocraft Vinyl, Decorative Paper, Decoupage, and Mod Podge

If you wish to create your own egg masterpiece..leave me a comment and I will draw 2 names on Friday April 13, 2012.

 
Thank you again for visiting and have a Happy Easter.

Michelle

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