Friday, November 12, 2010

Real Egg Ornaments





I have the first of the eggs to be listed in my
Etsy Shop.

The top picture is one of my 'Hummingbird' Eggs...
over the years it was always one of those ornaments that sold
immediately.
The second picture...is one a little more 'close to my heart'
as it is an 'Abstract Nativity' painted by my husband.
This was his own design and one of his
most popular ornaments.
This egg was painted in 2004...initialed and dated by him...
but was never coated as we didn't usually coat the eggs until we
had 24 of them ready to 'pour'.
(It was a rather messy undertaking...so we always waited until
we had enough eggs before dragging out everything we needed to do the pour.)

The third and fourth eggs...
Candles and Black Holly
were also painted by him, and are pictured
to show what the eggs look like with a heavy coating of resin.

The ornaments are actually quite durable...about the same
as a glass ball ornament...in spite of the fact that they are
real eggs.

We began painting the eggs in 1993, while living in Wyoming.
My sister had some geese eggs that she didn't want
to throw away.
For some reason, my husband thought they'd look
good painted up and tried to talk me into painting them.
I put it off...so he painted them.

One thing led to another and he messed with them until
he came up with the idea to coat them with resin.
Then we bounced them off the floor...to test their durability...
some broke and some didn't.
For the most part...we were satisfied and took them to a local
craft show...and sold out!

Every year after...from '93 to '03 we did the shows...
in Wyoming and then in Nebraska...
folks came to the shows to see what new egg designs we
had, so they could add to their collections.
I don't even want to think about how many special orders we did
over the years....including a standing order for 100 eggs every year
for one collector.

It seemed like we never had enough eggs to get through a 
Season so we started early in 2004, to get a head
start on the Season...
but we ended up not doing the shows that season...
and then he got sick in 2005.

So....I have a few eggs left that were never finished...
except for the painting...
that I'm listing.
And a batch of new ornaments in various stages
of completion
that I will be listing over the next week or so.

Most will be uncoated...leaving the option of
personalizing them...until around the 10th of December.
Then I'll have to offer only those ornaments that are
ready to ship out...because of shipping times during
the Holiday Season.

Anyway...that is the 'story of the eggs'.

I wasn't going to do anymore of them...since it was something
my husband and I did together...
but I have several dozen eggs that he'd already prepared
for painting...
and it seemed such a shame to let those just go to waste.

1 comment:

The Words Crafter said...

What a beautiful story. It made me tear up! The people that knew the both of you will now cherish their ornaments even more. I don't know that I would be able to part with them...

Wow.