Sunday, February 12, 2012

Egg Ornament Tutorial!

In my last post, I showed you guys some pictures of egg ornaments I was working on. Well, the tutorial is finally here! To begin, you need:
-Egg shells, cleaned and dried
-Any kind of tacky glue (I used Elmer's school glue) or hot glue if you prefer
-Glitter
-A variety of small objects such as figurines, beads, stickers, pictures, miniature animals, buttons, toys, etc.
-Sequins
-Fake moss or cotton balls for a ground/sky effect
-Indoor paint
-Scissors





To begin, get some eggs (as many as you can eat!) and break them open, very carefully, with the tip of a knife. To do this, I held the knife gently at an angle to the egg and drilled the tip into the shell while applying pressure. once the tip goes through the shell, use it to break off pieces from the inside to create a hole big enough for the egg yolk to escape. Mine were approximately the size of the tip of my thumb. Carefully rinse out the eggs, and let them dry completely.

 Next, paint the outside of the eggs whatever color you'd like to have underneath your glitter. This color isn't super important, because the glitter does cover the majority of it, but it does show through a bit. This step is necessary because I've found that if you don't add a layer of paint, the egg shell is impossible to cut with scissors, like I did.

 
Let the eggs dry completely, overnight if necessary. To dry them, I used my Paint Pens to stand them up by sticking the cap inside the hole of the egg. Make sure you have paper underneath in case any paint drips! Once the outside is dry, Choose another background color to paint the inside (I used mainly blue and green) and allow that to dry as well.










Next, apply glue to the entire outer surface of the egg, making sure you cover all areas. I just squeezed some glue onto the egg and used the tip of the glue bottle to spread it around. Make sure not to use too much glue here, because it will make strange shapes from the drips when you allow it to dry. Apply glitter to the entire outer surface, and allow it to dry completely.






For this step, you definitely want some relatively sharp scissors! Cut through the shell of the egg, very carefully, and form an oval-shaped opening in the egg shell.
 The egg should look like this when this step is completed. The edges will be rough and uneven, and it's all right if you happen to accidentally break off a small piece of the shell when you're cutting. Just remember to be careful!
 Next, use sequins, rope, cord, stickers, etc. to cover the exposed edge of the shell. I love the way sequins look! I also used to metallic cording and hemp cording on the ones I made. Once this dries, you can begin adding fake moss, buttons, etc. to make your own little miniature scene. I also used lampwork glass beads that I bought here and threaded cord through them before gluing them to the tops of the eggs. I found this was the simplest way to hang them. Have fun and use your imagination!


Here are some of the newest finished eggs:



I'd love to see pictures of anything anyone makes using this tutorial! Feel free to share!


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