Easter Egg Decorating Competition 2014

Another year and another Easter egg decorating competition. 

This year  was a disappointment as only three members of staff entered. 

I love to see other people creations and  see how they interpret  the given theme. 

This years theme was Spring.

I had initially decided to do a spring cleaning egg,  wearing an apron and scarf with broom, steam cleaner, dusters, bucket of water and holding a feather duster.

I collected tiny fluffy bird feathers from  my mother in laws garden to make the feather duster, I went to the farm shop and got some Duck eggs, and I did make all the above mentioned accessories, but when it got round to the doing the egg....I lost interest.

So then I decided to turn it into a Spring Onion! That has to be easy.

After five minutes faffing around with tissue paper and card, I decided to try a Hyacinth as it seemed to be the easiest option and I needed easy.
I had left things to last minute, yet again.

Instructions ( of a sort)
The flower spike up in the centre was created by rolling a half a sheet of card into a tight narrow cone and covering the top pointed half of the cone with a long strip  pale green tissue paper wound round the cone . About half way down the cone I changed to a strip of  slightly darker green tissue paper, gluing and winding until the cone was  completed covered.


Using the punch pictured below, I punched out about 30  of  these daisies  from pink paper, I sponged a little pretty in pink ink to each daisy for  extra depth and then cut away four petals from one side of each flower.
 ( keep the cut off parts they will be the smaller blooms/buds at the top of the plant and fill in blooms if needed later)
.



The flowers
I  glued one of the end petals and curled the petal round to meet the other end petal.

 This gave each flower a conical appearance. I then curled each and every petal by scrapping the back of each petal with the back of a closed pair of scissors.

 Be careful  on this,  too much pressure can result in torn  petals.



I flattened out the points on the base of the flowers and added a little Tom Bow Glue and began sticking the blooms to the stem, starting about three inches up the stem and working my way up to the top.


You'll need patience to do this bit as the bloom you are working with will want to push the last bloom off.

 My advise would be to stick a line of flowers up one side then on the opposite side allow the glue to dry then fill in the spaces.
If you have any small open spaces after attaching the main blooms use the  four petal pieces you cut off the main flower previously.

Attaching to egg
Cut slits about 1/2" long  and about Half and inch apart around the base of the stem  the fold them outwards these will be the tabs to attach the flower spike to the egg.
Using a hot glue gun drizzle glue over these tabs and quickly stick  the  stem to the egg.


The Leaves
The Leaves were made by cutting broad sword shapes from green card and inking the edges with a darker shade of green ink. 

Cut a slit about one inch long going up the centre of the base of the leaves add a little glue to the bottom inch if each leaf and place round the bottom of the stem ( the slit will help the leaf to curl round the stem. Keeping adding leaves until you have the desired look.

Tidying up the join
Using  thin, short, strips of green tissue paper and a glue stick wind the tissue around the  base of the stem to conceal the hot glue and the bottom of the leaves. 

Finishing touches
With  brown and beige alcohol markers scribble in some  lines around the egg.
on the under side of the egg I made the roots from  white sewing thread and a fine white  blind cord and attached them to the bottom of the egg using a hot glue gun as this glue needs to be waterproof.

The Butterflies
I heat embossed  some butterflies with black embossing powder and then sponged  ink over them and added a little glitter.

Not having a proper Hyacinth bulb vase the search was on for a glass pot to fit my Duck Egg....

Amazingly enough hidden away on the kitchen counter was an empty mini coffee jar waiting for me to decide if it was going into the recycling bin or was it nice enough for me to recycle another way. As you can see the  I recycled it my way and it was cheaper than buying a proper bulb holder.


Sue's  Very Worthy Entry.


I am sure the creator of this little chap won't mind me sharing her entry to this years competition. 
He is gorgeous!

Humpty Dumpty brought a big smile to my face as soon as I saw him this morning.

(hubby would say that's because he has a tash & I kind of like moustaches, probably because hubby had one when we dated 30 years ago)

Sue told us,  her daughter said "he looks like a Mexican Humpty Dumpty with that moustache" ....
But I am looking at this photo and I am now seeing him as a Mafia  Book Keeper.... with eyes like that he couldn't be a hit man,  he 'd never see his target. lol.  Sorry Sue!

I digress.... 
Sue has  very cleverly used a Stampin' Up!  Snowman building stamp set called Stylin' Snowfolk  to stamped  his face. I don't think I would have thought about stamping on an egg.... (Now there's a thought for next year. hee hee)
I really like the colour combo  used here, they all work together perfectly. 

Sue's Class loved him  and at the end of the day she did a ( no money involved) raffle to decide  which  lucky child would have the privilege of taking him home. Isn't that a lovely idea.

And the winner was..........

Elmer the elephant. Jemima got second  place and the invisible man came in third.

Jemima Puddle Duck Egg Decorating Competition 2013.

 I can't resist posting this a little earlier than I had intended.

Every year there is an egg decorating competition at for staff at work. I was politely told some years ago I wasn't allowed to enter as it was thought I would win every year.

 I was never sure if this was a serious or a joke, so in all of my years there, I have only ever entered this competition once...... and funnily enough I won. 

This year the theme is book characters.

I was in two minds whether to enter or not.

But at lunchtime today I thought blow it, 

I will enter and then set about boiling some eggs.

I really wanted to have ago at turning an egg into  Jemima Puddle Duck.

And here she is...

Having cooked half a dozen eggs  and while the eggs were still hot, I moulded some air dry clay into the shape of the neck and head of a duck and a pair of wings.  I smoothed the base of the neck as best I could onto the hot egg. Then I positioned the wings and blended the top of the wings into the base of the back of the neck. Surprisingly, No glue was needed. The hot egg also helped the air dry clay to set quicker.

 I made a slot in the head for the beak to slide into later. I also folded a small piece of scrap card and wedged  it between the chin and the chest  to support the head while the clay was drying. As I wanted the head slightly cocked to one side, not drooping on her chest.

At this point lunchtime was over so I hot footed it back to work.

 On my return home I painted the egg and the clay white and allowed it to dry while I set about making the bonnet from blue card and ribbon.

I used a large bead  about the same size as the ducks head for the fittings to prevent squashing the head.

The beak was made using the five petal flower punch. I punched out the flower then cut two of the petal off and folded in half and trimmed away the points off the petals.

 For the eyes I punched two tiny black circles highlighted them with white paint and added a drop of crystal effects to each circle and allowed them to dry.

 For the webbed feet, I punched two flowers using the boho punch. I only needed three petals for each foot so I cut away the excess petals. I lightly sponged the edge of the beak and feet with pumpkin pie ink, curved the beak slightly and folded the feet to give the impression of ridges  in the feet.                                                  The ruffled ribbon was created by running a line of machine stitching up the center of the ribbon. I gathered it by pulling the bobbin thread until my ruffle was the desired length.

 Using a hot glue gun, I ran a line of glue at the base of the bonnets brim and quickly applied the ruffle. I did the same at for the ruffle at the back of the bonnet only using a much shorter length of ribbon.

Now you'd think the scarf would be a piece of cake to drape on the egg and getting it to look the way it does the pictures..... Think again, there is no way you can get a piece of fabric to wrap round a duck the way it does in these books.

 I ended up cutting the fabric into two squares and a rectangle and sticking the pieces together  with snail adhesive to achieve the look and even then it wasn't perfect. I come close to cursing Beatrix Potter for this, but then I remembered all my trips to the library as a child to get her books out.  I loved those books. I couldn't wait to finish one book so I could go back and get the next one.   Fortunately for me the library was only two streets away from where I lived, so I was a frequent visitor.

Enough of memory lane and back to this egg, once the scarf pieces were stuck in position I ironed  it and the stamped rain drops all over it and to add a little bling,  I stuck some very tiny sparkles in amongst the rain drops.

To get Jemima to stand,.. I used a hot glue gun and stuck two  1 pieces together and the glued them to the base of her nest,  then applied a large dollop of hot glue on top of the pennies and placed her on top of the glue. By doing this it raised the egg off the base giving the impression  of legs.

NB.  Her feet, I stuck to the base NOT on the egg.

To make the base I cut a circle about 4" across and ran a thick line of glue about 1/2 an inch away from the edge all the way round and began sticking the screwed up waste paper from cutting the the reeds pushing it lightly into the glue.

I used a selection of  punches, a tiny leaf, a sprig of leaves punched out in different  shades of  browns and green and tiny flowers of cream. 

The whole project took about three hours not including drying time.

Well the competition is on Thursday I'll let you know how Jemima does gets on.  There have been some superb entries over the years so she could be up against some stiff competition.  Keeping fingers crossed for a win, but having said that, 

I really don't need to win a chocolate Easter egg  As they say  ...............Chocolate makes my clothes shrink. :)

Happy Easter one and all.

Nite  x