Monday, June 28, 2010

How to make a hollow structure from an egg shell

Today I'm sharing a polymer clay technique using an eggshell and good old fashion vinegar. You can make a beautiful lattice structure to embellish on the outside or leave an opening to decorate the inside of you structure. I'll run through the steps with the visual following.
1. Blow out the inside of the egg. This works better if you stick a skewer inside the eggshell and scramble the egg a little before blowing it out the other end.
2. Decorate the egg shell with conditioned polymer clay. Leave enough open space to achieve a nice open look. Make sure you create a base for your structure to stand.
3. Bake at the manufacturers recommended time and temp. You can cushion your structure on polyester fiber fill or stand it on its base.
4. If you want to add more embellishment to the outside of your structure you can do it at this time, then rebake.
5. Gently tap a few holes in the shell of your egg and completely submerge your egg in apple cider vinegar. Old butter containers work great for this. You don't want to seal the lid but you do want to put a little bit of weight on the top to hold the egg shell under.
6. Let the structure stay submerged for about 3 days. When you take it out a lot of the eggshell will be dissolved. It will look rather gross. Rinse you structure and chip any remaining shell off with an x-acto blade.
You now have a wonderful open structure to embellish however you want.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Citra Solve and National Geographic... A match made in heaven



I recently tried a technique of painting citra solve on national geographic pages causing the ink to bleed. I came up with some really cool backgrounds for ATCs. Check this out.