Friday Egg: Flora and Fauna

Today's egg is a simple white on black goose egg. I divided the egg into four vertical quarters so there are four birds total, two on opposite sides and the floral design travels around the egg between them. I have yet to varnish so in some of the close-up photos you can see the marvelous pebbly texture of the goose egg.

This is an egg that doesn't require much exposition or explanation which is great because I am going to the ACL Festival today and my time is short.

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Echinacea

Hello almost weekend! Today I am showing a goose egg done in a stacking pattern of purple and pink flowers with traditional stars for roots. It came out a lot more pastel than I would have liked, but it has a charm of it's own that I can see now that I don't have an idea of what it should look like. I made this egg in May, so that's long enough for me to have forgotten my original plan. 

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Not an egg!

Happy Friday everyone! I've had enough of eggs for just a while; Easter can be such a busy time for me. I had a great time at the Neill-Cochran House Museum Dye-O-Rama last Friday. We had a great turnout and have some really fun changes in the works for next year, so stay tuned.

So today instead of eggs, I thought I would show you another little house project that I have been having fun with. My mom and I took a mosaics class in the spring and I have been making mosaic stepping stones to use as a walkway to my front door since we don't have a sidewalk. Next time I would probably choose one design and use that for all of them, but we have had a good time creating these and they do the job.

Happy Friday!

This one features some small tiles I made when I took a few ceramics classes. Finally found a way to use them!

This is one that my mom designed. She pieced in the round shape in the middle and I did the rest.

This one is JoJo's. She really had fun with it.

KEYE TV Early morning spot

Click on the link below to take a look at the spot from eaarrrlllly this morning! Come out to the Dye-O-Rama on Friday between Noon and 4 at the Neill-Cochran House Museum. It's going to be a lot of fun!

http://www.keyetv.com/news/features/morning/stories/easter-egg-dyeorama-1194.shtml

Friday Egg: Bright Morning Poppies Clockwork

Friday egg is on Saturday this week, but it's a good one! 

I was contacted by another artist named Tina Brand last week. She has an interesting project that she is working on called "Into the Ovoid" where she is addressing some of the inherent problems involved in displaying the eggs we make. Firstly, it's impossible to present the total design in a photograph because of the way the design wraps and changes as it wraps itself around the egg. Secondly, the eggs are fragile and can easily be broken if they are displayed so that they design can be seen from all sides. The way I have addressed this recently is to present the eggshells in a deep frame, depending from the top on an invisible fishing line so the owner can turn it around to see the design. Tina solved this problem in a novel and fun way: she's making a stop-motion movie! Take a look at it here: http://intotheovoid.com/. If you want to kick in some cash to make it happen, you can donate to her kickstarter fund: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tinabrand/into-the-ovoid-explores-beautiful-ukrainian-eggs-i.

After looking at her work, I realized how great it would be to use this idea on my blog. Pictures are good, but sometimes you really need to see the whole design. So with Tina's okay, I have made a few of these gifs so that you can really see how the design works on the egg. I think I like it! What do you think?

As for the egg itself, it is an ostrich egg I did last year. I started with a white egg and waxed all my outlines, then filled in with orange, red, golden wheat, green, and black and then I etched it back down to white. I really like the "freckles" that show up on the white background.

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Babel

Friday Egg today comes from a dream I had. I don't remember much except layers and layers of writing and language and the biggest was a sort of brick red. Because it comes from a dream I haven't got much to say about the meaning of it except to say that I named it "Babel". The eggshell itself took the dye in a spotty and interesting way. It was pretty much unprocessed in any way beyond cleaning so the texture really shows is the brick colored layer.

I waxed the first layer on a white goose eggshell then dyed it Brick Red (UGS) and waxed the inner portion of the writing. Next I dyed to egg black (UGS) and wrote one of the two smaller texts, then washed back to white and wrote the other layer of text and dyed it the final color Deep Blue Sea. (PUSA)

Happy Friday!

Friday Egg: Poppies Blueprint

I was thinking about the glorious, colorful randomness of a flower garden and how that riot of color springs from a tiny little nondescript black or brown seed. I imagined what a seed might look like if it's function could be seen as a blueprint or plan. For this egg the ground is made up of the organized clockwork of a seed. It contains the colors that will be in the flowers as well as the machinery to make it grow. Then above is the flower that emerges from that organized machine. Kind of the same way I create an egg when I think about it. I plot out the design with pencil and am very organized and precise in my measurements but what you see in the end is the color, form and design.

Happy Friday!