Ornament

John and I are heading to a tree trimming party this weekend, so I made this ornament.

It was fun to make and I think I'll make some more for other people.

Ukrainian Egg Dying 5th and final part

Happy Easter! (to those of you who celebrate the holiday, otherwise happy spring day.)  The final two eggs are most appropriate to this day.  During the annual Easter egg hunt at the church I grew up in, there were always three special eggs.  If you found those, you could trade them in for a big prize, a chocolate rabbit or a coconut lamb cake.  When I was a kid, my mother used to make these eggs, writing the word Alleluia on them in latin, greek, and hebrew.  When I made my version to give as a gift to my new parish, I decided to go with latin, arabic, and hebrew.  A disclaimer is needed here:  I don't nor have I ever written or spoken any of these languages.  I got them off the internet so I apologize if they are terribly recreated here.

My mother created a beautiful egg also celebrating this season.

I love how she made the purple mottled looking.  This has been my Holy Egg Week.  I hope you enjoyed it.  What are you doing to celebrate the season?

Ukrenian Egg Dying Part 4

Today I am going to share the eggs I made for Katie and John, now that they both have seen them.
I tried to make a tree on Katie's egg because she loves branch imagery. I had a bit of trouble getting a brown color for the trunk, but overall I am satisfied with my efforts.

John's has three panels, but i am only going to share the two with pictures on them.  The third is personal.

The star panel didn't photograph that well.  It looks much more elegant in person.

Ukrenian Egg Dying part 3

Since I was making eggs for my finace, John, and my sister in law, Katie, for their "Easter Baskets", I asked my mother to make one for mine.  Here is what she came up with.

Isn't it sweet?  She used a q-tip to apply the dyes instead of dipping the egg, so it has a more springy pastel quality to it.  I love it!
I made this swirl egg just to try out the hot pink and turquoise dyes.

What do you think?

Ukrainian Egg Dying Part 2

Yesterday's post was kind of ridiculously heavy, so today I thought I would go short.  Today I am sharing my geeky egg.

Captain Eggmerica!  Sorry, I couldn't resist.
I wanted to make quite clear that this was a Captain America egg and not just a patriotic egg, which is why I chose to put the scales on the blue part, and my favorite part, the helmet wings.

I think all the little scales really add a lot.  John says I should make a whole Avengers set, so who knows, that may be in the cards at a later date.  Check back tomorrow for another big reveal.

Ukrainian Egg Dying part 1

Ukrainian egg dying is a wax resist method for dying artistic eggs.  An intricate pattern or design is created by drawing on the egg shells with wax using a tool called a kiska.  You then dip the egg in dyes, covering the sections you want to remain those colors as you go.  I have traditionally done Ukrainian Egg dying every year as part of my pre-Easter activities.  This year is the first year I have done it as an adult in my own home.  In the past, I have dyed raw eggs that were unblown.  Once they are colored, you can let the insides dry slowly and after about a year they are completely dry.  Since I was not sure I could keep raw eggs either in our current apartment, or through our upcoming moves without breaking them, I decided to blow the eggs out first.  I used a single hole method, drilling a small hole in the egg shell and then blowing all the insides out before rinsing thoroughly. 

Out of the dozen eggs I started with, I only lost two in the process.  They popped when I inserted the pump.  They dyes are made by mixing powdered pigment with boiling water and vinegar.  I set up nine different colors.

I dyed eight of the eggs, and my mother dyed two, so I thought I would share a few photos each day this week until Easter.  Call it Holy Egg Week.
The first egg I want to share was one I wanted to imitate a vase I saw.  It was white with a blue floral print on it.

Here is a close up of my favorite flower from this egg.

This flower inspired me to try a more structured version of this egg.  I created a herringbone pattern to divide four panels in which I depicted a few flowers like the one above.  Here is is during the process, after I had put on the wax but before I put the egg in the dye.

You can see how challenging it was to get the whole panel evenly colored so it would turn out white.  here is the final result.

Check back tomorrow to see some more eggs.
What are your pre-Easter traditions?

Here's what I've been up to. . .

I went to my mother's for a few days, and on Friday we took six hours to rip down the '70s style wood paneling in the family room.  Here it is before:

After we got the first panel down, we found some drywall in pretty good shape behind it.  We thought, great, we will do a bit of spackling and paint the wall no problem.  That was optimistic, at the end of the six hours we thought, we'll hire someone to do a lot of spackling and paint the wall, no problem.  Here is is after:

The room looks so much bigger and full of light now!  I can't wait to see it with a fresh coat of paint.
Since returning home, I have been working on some egg dying for Easter.

 I will share the results in a couple of days.

Paper Baskets

Spring is (theoretically) on the way, and with it, Easter.  Those of us living in the US, at least, no matter how hard we try to avoid it, are receiving catalogs filled with images of bright pastel clothing and jewelry.  This seems a perfect opportunity to make some woven paper baskets.

 The colors are so bright, and the glossy catalogs are the perfect weight to make sturdy little baskets.

I started off with the idea that I would just weave them and rely on the weaving to hold together, but I ultimately used a few dabs of hot glue to finish them off and make them a bit stronger.

In a few weeks you will see the items I am making to fill these little baskets, other than the curled newsprint that is.
What do you do to upcycle those pounds of wasted paper?

More holidays!

I made a cute little Christmas Robot out of Sculpey,

He's so shiny it's hard to get a good picture.

Also, I know that this was a thing four or five years ago, but I still love watching this video every Christmas:

Gift Wrap

This morning I found this pretty little present under the Christmas tree.

I guess Santa came by to drop off a present early.  And I guess he found one of my old painting palettes while he was here.

I think it's quite pretty.  Do you wrap presents in any reused paper?

Geeked out for Christmas

Having decided to make all my own ornaments this year, I realized I had the chance to really customize our tree to reflect our interests.
Our little plastic tree arrived on Saturday, and we set it up and strung it with lights before really getting down to the ornament making.

It was fairly inexpensive because it was on sale and it is just about the right size for our small apartment.  It is three feet tall and about a foot wide at the base.  It sits comfortably on the side tabe next to our couch.

When I was growing up, decorating the tree was a family affair.  It was a time when we could take out all the ornaments my parents had collected over the years and remember the times we all shared together.  Almost all the ornaments had a story.  We had either bought or made them and each one signified a time in our lives.  I love that idea, and since John and I are just starting our lives together, I want to make sure we have a way to look back too.  One year, when I was very young, my mother made cookie ornaments, and we each painted one (I think I was little enough that I "helped" to paint one).  I thought that would be an inexpensive way for us to make our own ornaments.  I looked it up, and found this recipe from allrecipes.com.  Mine didn't turn out particularly flat, I don't know what I was doing wrong, but a few turned out well. On Sunday, John, his mother, and I sat down and painted them.  It was a nice little family activity.  We turned on Pandora's Christmas channel and told stories about Christmas past.

John chose his favorite superhero, Batman, to immortalize in ornament.



His Batman symbol fit in really well with the Batmobile I had already transformed into an ornament.  He painted the body of the ornament black and added the yellow bat symbol after the black paint dried.




I went for Superman and Captain America myself.

I am really happy with the results and know that we can reuse these ornaments for years to come because I sprayed them with Krylon Crystal Clear, an acrylic coating that dries really fast and seals whatever you have sprayed.

Now we come to my favorite part of the tree, a Mario Star topper.

 I was not originally planning to go with the Mario Star.  My plan was to just make a star out of Sculpey and paint it metallic gold.  I made a disk of aluminum foil and added triangles of Sculpey, smoothing and adding extra clay until I had a white star.  I added a stem of foil wrapped in clay and used a mechanical pencil to make a hole the top of the tree could fit in.

Once I had the star, it was obvious I had to go with the Mario influence.  Everytime  I looked at it, I heard the little bing.  I painted it yellow, adding a darker orange around the edges and a white highlight to the edges.  I painted little black eyes with white highlights, and painted the stem green to blend with the tree.  I sprayed it with sealer and when it was dry I tried to attach it to the tree.  The top sprig on the tree was not sturdy enough to hold up the weight of this star.

I was worried until I realize I could pop that sprig off and slide the star down onto the top of the plastic trunk.  It fits perfectly and looks positively geeky.

How does your Christmas tree reflect your interests?