Buttons&Beads&Quilts!

This posting today is about some of my other artistic pursuits besides art quilts. I loved to decorate Easter eggs as a child. There was especially something magical about drawing a design on the egg with a clear crayon and watching as those areas did not take the dye. So my first introduction to wax resist, batik like dyeing methods was with colored dye tablets and smelly vinegar.

Later in life, I dated a man for a short time who was importing ostrich eggs from Ghana as a way to set up cottage industries there. He wanted me to decorate some of the eggs as a prototype for designs that could be replicated in Africa. The relationship quickly fell apart, and since I was no longer under any constraints to make something replicable for people in Africa, my fascination with ostrich eggs began.

There’s something fun about having such a large “canvas” to work on compared to regular sized hen eggs. Here is another view of my first attempt – “Baroque Egg”. It sits in a large, metal spoked basket decorated with dragonflies. The surface of the egg was painted with gold paint, and then multiple layers of gel medium was painted on to decorate the surface and to attach the feathers and other ephemera that I added to the surface. The yellow, ringed circle with a red diagonal line through it in the bottom and middle right of the upper picture and the lower right of the second pic were cut from an old silk tie. (I find my materials where I can and whatever amuses me.)

It takes about a day for each layer of the gilded paint and gel medium to dry, but when I was pleased with the surface, I then began with embellishing the surface with buttons and beads. Any with shanks had to have them cut off, and some had to have the remaining protrusions filed away to make them flat enough on the back to glue on. I used E-6000 glue, which is readily available in hobby and craft stores. While smelly, it does a great job of securely fastening on the embellishments.

“Volcano Egg” is so named because of the broken crack in the upper part of the egg. Even when eggs are ordered from an ostrich company here in the States, they don’t pack them well, and as much as a third will arrive broken and cracked. This one, with the jagged protrusion from one side looked to me as if something had erupted from the inside, breaking free, just like a volcano. There is a strip of silvery, woven ribbon coming out of the opening. Red buttons and gold buttons to suggest lava on all the sides. Most of these additions are encrusted around the opening, as if they had cooled before flowing down to the bottom of the egg. This egg was glued at the base of a metal candle holder. Since this egg sits on a table near a fountain, the moisture in the air has given the metal base a lovely rusty patina that I couldn’t have planned on.

This second pic shows a slightly closer view of the egg and the deep dark recess of the inner hole inside. That hole is lined with lots of shiny red and gold buttons and beads, but you would have to look inside to see the encrusted surface. It was with a great deal of difficulty, using long forceps that are used for placing plants in terrariums, that I was able to glue the embellishments where I wanted them. Sometimes, that meant sitting there, with forceps in hand, holding the bead in place until the glue had dried enough to make sure that it would stay.  I like to think of this egg as if it’s a bird made geode, where you won’t see all of its beauty until you look inside.

Here in the Baltimore, MD – USA area, there’s a tradition of playing “crackies” with your dyed Easter eggs. Children would take an egg and tap against an opponent’s egg, hoping that the other one would crack. I think that the winner got some of the candy from the opponent’s Easter basket. I imagine that with factory raised eggs today, that would be very hard to play, as the shells tend to be much thinner now than long ago. However, anybody that used an ostrich egg would be sure to be a winner, as the shells are about .25″ or 3mm thick. However, having spent all the time decorating these eggs, I know that I’ll never play “crackies” with them.

Do you have any experiences with decorating eggs or a similar medium that’s not one of the usual materials ?

Why not leave a comment as to your thoughts on this posting. Please take a minute, fill out the form by clicking on the “comments/no comments link” at the top of the posting, and then share your ideas with the rest of us. We all grow when we share our thoughts and impressions, so why not join our growing community of those who appreciate art quilts and textile arts. We’d love to hear from you!

You can see more of my art work on my web site at www.fiberfantasies.com

To find out how to buy my art work, please check out “How to Buy my Art Work” in the “Pages” section to the right of this blog.