Egg Art: Experimenting With Mistakes
Hey, don’t toss that half-finished egg – some of my most interesting designs came about as an accident!
Every so often, when I am lost in eggworld, I lose track of what I was doing, which sections I had finished, or where I was going with a particular design.
Rather than chuck an egg for a small mistake, or putting it in my ‘examples’ drawer (where my broken, cracked, or non-sellable eggs are incarcerated), I try to make it work.
Here is the result of my latest boo-boo.
Quilt Star boo-boo
I meant to continue that black-grey checkered background around the middle band with the cross squares, but AFTER I put the tassels on the square shapes, I realized that the red lines would interfere and look choppy against the black and grey. Plus I had those little heart-shaped curlicues at the ends.
So I did what I usually do in these situations – I covered the ‘keeper’ ends with wax, immersed the egg in a jar of white vinegar, and etched off the background of the middle band. I meant to give it a light turquoise dip after the vinegar etch, but I kind of like the light-colored band. So I left it be. It’s very unusual, and it sold almost immediately.
Here are a few more of my ‘mistakes’ . . .
My black dye was old, and too weak for the center band, so I vinegar-etched it off and brought it back to a creamy white.
I had a dark red background, that made the whole egg look dim – no contrast. Etched it off, and the flowers really pop against the green leaves!
This is one where I lost track of my measurements and had to add those orange blocks of color at the top and bottom.
Original background was going to be black. Ugh. Blue over a vinegar wash looks bright and shiny!
. . . so, as you can see – when in doubt – add vinegar!
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