Covered egg

Joining the Smooshers and also taking part in a craft swap elsewhere inspired me to try some new things with pc, kinda like I was when I started out. I kind of bypassed some wonderful elements to this fantastic medium by diving straight into miniature animals. It was good fun to take a few days out to work on my craft swap and challenge entries.
I'll be showing off some of the new techniques I tried in later posts but one of the things I made was a covered egg. I've wanted to try this since I featured Coltpixy a few weeks ago, mostly to see if vinegar really will dissolve egg shell.


I had no idea how to go about this, but figured I should start with an empty egg. I did the old making two holes and blowing out the goo trick. Ludo ate the egg proper and it's free range! (this did go to a vegan, but as I am veggie and very careful with my eggs I hope its ok that I used one.)
I'd purchased some clay in different colours so I conditioned some Premo Green pearl clay, with a bit of metallic powder for added sheen. I made a sheet about #4 thickness and made patterns with the back of a teaspoon, I cut these out and stuck them on, I then made thin rolls of clay and wound them about until I was happy. I was looking at a gardening book and found a pretty unusual clematis so I was using that as inspiration. I then made the flowers and smoothed it all over. (you can still see the lines due to the mica shift effect I think, which is pretty cool) I attached little balls as feet and into the oven it went.

It sat in the vinegar for about 30 hours, at first nothing was happening, I bought some new vinegar and completely covered it and then it worked!The hangy vine bits were pretty fragile so I tried to strengthen them by rebaking, only they fell off and had to be superglued back on, lol. I bought some 'air plants' and glued one in and voila. A little plant in a plant basket!