Eggshell ornaments
As part of our “post-consumer Christmas” in which Pan and I refuse to buy meaningless and somehow insignificant Christmas gifts for folks, we have begun to create our one-of-a-kind presents.
Our first thought was to use something that is an integral part of our life as well as easy to get a hold of. CHICKENS! That’s right. We immediately thought of the girls. However, the expense and potential mess involved with shipping omelets or deviled eggs to friends and family was, indeed, food for thought. “But what about their eggs?” Pan asked. I was quick to respond. “Eggs. Now there is an idea. Everyone should raise chickens.” Pan assured me that what she meant was that we could craft something from the eggshells.
I remembered seeing Faberge Easter eggs at a museum once. They were beautiful in their intricacy. While I knew we wouldn’t be able to pull off such artistry I knew we could still come up with something. So, we started to research and came up with . It was a bit too ornate and even audacious for us. We wanted something similar. So, we decided to throw out the patterns and do something on our own.
We were puzzled by how to keep the shell in tact though. We found and thought, if it’s easy enough for a 10-year old, then even Drew can do it.
So, now we had the shells and had some ideas in our head. We quickly began to shape the shells. As Pan cut out what we thought would be a sizable opening she realized it looked more like a mouth. EUREKA! We would make all 16 of our niece and nephews their very own ‘Eggcellent Christmas Creature.”
We got out the paints. Luckily we have quite a bit of crafting supplies laying around. We started with simple fabric paint and then graduated into some modeling paint with a nice semi-gloss luster. We even experimented with nail polish.
As our little guys started to take shape we found more and more personalities that were fun and worthy of committing to our project.
Pan noticed that our little ‘entertainer’ bore a striking resemblance to me.
Somehow though, our gifts just didn’t seem right. They were fun for us but we kept having problems and 3 of our initial 6 prototypes fell the way of ‘ol Humpty Dumpty….minus the couplet form.
So, we decided to put our brushes up for the night and come back to the project later. Needless to say, we haven’t returned to the project and aren’t sure if we will. Perhaps our ‘Eggcellent Christmas Creatures’ are more enjoyable for us than our gaggle of gift-getters.
What do you think? Shall we keep going? Any other ideas?
