Friday, November 28, 2014

2014 eggs

November 5 2014

My current work in progress is 16 washi covered eggs that I will make into Christmas ornaments. I've now got 13 eggs covered. (These photos don't do the paper justice.)

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For information on how I make washi covered egg ornaments see

http://pinwheelponders.blogspot.ca/2009/03/some-thoughts-on-washi-decoupage-eggs.html

(After I finish this project I plan to update that page.)

November 20 2014

All 16 eggs now have at least 7 coats of dilute decoupage medium and once I give them a quick buff with super fine sandpaper they'll be ready for the final coat.

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Someone asked about how I make my holes.  In the past I have pierced a circle of tiny holes and then chipped out the center circle.  This time I am using my set of 100 mm needle files. I start with the circular file but the resulting hole isn't quite large enough for a toothpick so I enlarge the top hole with the square file and the bottom hole with the slightly larger triangular file.

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November 25 2014

Letting the final coat dry out well before I remove the toothpicks.

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My camera got the colours right on the next photo!

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November 28

All done! (My camera/ image software really washes out the colour of some of these egg carton photos. I'll have to try to fix them when I get the time.)

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December 13

Today I finally got a chance to do the gloss coat on seven eggs I made for my own collection.

To speed up the process I hung up four of them and poked the other three into a styrofoam block. (And then I began to put away all the supplies that have been crowding my desktop for 2 months!)

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For the last two ornaments I got brave.  Usually my base (before sanding and the gloss coat) is 8 or 9 coats of decoupage medium that has been diluted with equal parts of water.  This time my base was 3 coats of full strength decoupage medium applied with a wet brush followed by 2 coats of dilute decoupage medium.  The result was the same but the process was a lot faster.

Note to self.  The papers I used were from The Paper Place.  (From left to right and top to bottom)

745CT, 481C, 480CL, (? from SF),
709CL, 865CT and 117C

Saturday December 20 2014

Well I left the eggs to cure ... and got pulled into a vortex of other projects. Today I decided that I just had to get them off my desk so I removed the toothpicks...

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... and introduced the new eggs to the old eggs.

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And now I can finally put my sewing machine back on my desk!

2 comments:

  1. Amazing lot of patience to do this.

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    Replies
    1. The waiting is what requires the most patience. If I could have convinced myself to waste the egg contents, instead of only emptying eggs at the same rate that we consumed eggs, the project would have progressed a lot faster! And now that I know that I can apply fewer but thicker coats of decoupage medium and still get a brush stroke free finish it will require less patience.

      Fortunately the most fiddly bit, applying the paper to the egg, takes patience but not a lot of time.

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