Thursday, March 25, 2010

Well! I carved for a couple of hours yesterday and managed to accomplish much more than I did on my last carving day, I must be getting better at it.
It's getting to the point where areas of it are fragile, I broke 2 such fine areas yesterday but I managed to incorporate them into the design.
So now that the top half of the egg is carved I am viewing the bottom half with trepidation, how and where do I hold it inorder to avoid breaking it, answers on a postcard please!

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

It's an egg's life!

It's an egg's life!
www.etsy.com/shop/jdhandmadedesigns
I opened an Etsy shop just over a month ago, I made my first sale through the web site this morning! How cool is that. I have a number of items for sale, all hand made.

A week ago I found I had used up all my jewelry components and needed to order more. Whilst waiting for the order to arrive my fingers began to itch for more making. Looking around my studio my eyes alighted on 2 ostrich eggs and 2 emu eggs that were given to me a couple of years ago.

The person who gave the eggs to me is constantly asking me if I've done anything with them, soooo I thought, now is as good a time as any.

I've never carved an ostrich egg before, a little research was in order before I put the dremel to the egg! I searched all over the net to see what egg carvers are doing and then decided I would design with reference to Charles Rennie Mackintosh as I'm a lover of all things Mackintosh!

I had been warned about the mess involved in egg carving but I don't think I quite grasped the fineness of the powder resulting from carving, or it's ability to invade every orifice on me and around me, luckily I had the foresight to use a mask!

I designed and drew and carved for over 6 hours. This is the result!
I think I may need a lot more hours to finish this. I'll blog more and update pictures when I get that far!