Doin' stuff with eggs!

[Gryphon]

The frosting really dresses it up, I cheated and just bought those gel tubes with premade/colored frosting in them! Makes the cookie look really fancy. Unfortunately, unlike traditional sugar frosting it never sets, so you can't stack cookies on top of each other when you use the gel frosting. If I ever make another horse cookie cutter though, I'm going to make sure the legs are a LOT wider, I kept ripping the front legs off when lifting the cutter from the dough! Had to keep on performing horse cookie surgery.

 

[LissyB]

LOL! Sounds like our Christmas cookie decorating!

 

[urban escapee]

This is simply amazing work...nothing like what my sculpy eggs turned out. I do have to ask. Once you get the sculpy on and baked, you use the vinegar to disolve the shell, correct? do you put the whole thing into a bowl of vinegar or do you fill the egg with vinegar? Does the sculpy take on the vinegar smell?

 

[Gryphon]

I fill a mug with vinegar, and let it dissolve the egg as long as I can stand to wait (what can I say, I'm impatient when it comes to seeing the end result! ) I have some dental pick tools I bought that do a fantastic job of cracking out the rest of the egg. There's absolutely no smell on the clay afterwards, but I did notice one time that the clay got slightly soft. That may have been either from leaving it in the vinegar too long or I hadn't baked it long enough. That was early on when I first started doing this though, so it could have been any number of things.

Also, I should say that I DON'T use sculpey III or any of those funky ones you commonly find, the only sculpy that's worth the money is super sculpey, which only comes in a flesh tone. It can be painted with acrylics afterwards, or tinted with other clay colors since it has a lot of translucent in it. Super Sculpey holds detail very well, and is very strong once baked. I'll post a picture of a dragon I made with super sculpey then painted with acrylic lumiere paints (I also used silk paper for the wings). Regular sculpey, or sculpey III will never take fine detail, and is super brittle once cooked, eventually breaking apart no matter how carefully you handle it. Fimo and Premo are both MUCH stronger and well worth your money.

Here's the dragon I made. I used a variety of tools, but for the most part I used a simple flat round edge tool and a fine point to make all the scales. The eyes are garnets, and the stone it's holding onto is actually a lump of glaze from my ceramics class, when the kiln got to cone "OH ****!" and melted half of the pot's glazes completely off. (the other half wound up with FANTASTIC color)

Here's the before cooking: "I'm a naked dragon!"

And here she is after painting, adding paper, and silver leafing her horns: "I'm sparkly!"

 

[Imp]

Wow, that's amazing.

Imp

 

[Kassaundra]

I fill a mug with vinegar, and let it dissolve the egg as long as I can stand to wait (what can I say, I'm impatient when it comes to seeing the end result!

) I have some dental pick tools I bought that do a fantastic job of cracking out the rest of the egg. There's absolutely no smell on the clay afterwards, but I did notice one time that the clay got slightly soft. That may have been either from leaving it in the vinegar too long or I hadn't baked it long enough. That was early on when I first started doing this though, so it could have been any number of things.
Also, I should say that I DON'T use sculpey III or any of those funky ones you commonly find, the only sculpy that's worth the money is super sculpey, which only comes in a flesh tone. It can be painted with acrylics afterwards, or tinted with other clay colors since it has a lot of translucent in it. Super Sculpey holds detail very well, and is very strong once baked. I'll post a picture of a dragon I made with super sculpey then painted with acrylic lumiere paints (I also used silk paper for the wings). Regular sculpey, or sculpey III will never take fine detail, and is super brittle once cooked, eventually breaking apart no matter how carefully you handle it. Fimo and Premo are both MUCH stronger and well worth your money.
Here's the dragon I made. I used a variety of tools, but for the most part I used a simple flat round edge tool and a fine point to make all the scales. The eyes are garnets, and the stone it's holding onto is actually a lump of glaze from my ceramics class, when the kiln got to cone "OH ****!" and melted half of the pot's glazes completely off. (the other half wound up with FANTASTIC color)
Here's the before cooking: "I'm a naked dragon!"

And here she is after painting, adding paper, and silver leafing her horns: "I'm sparkly!"

It is beautiful!!!! I always thought the clay couldn't be solid and thick to bake or it would crack and not bake through, is your dragon hollow?

 

[Gryphon]

She actually has an aluminum foil core, with wire stuck into it for the wings and horns. While you don't want air bubbles, polyclay has a lot less volatile reaction than traditional clay. Part of that is due to it being cooked at much lower temperatures, partly due to it being far less ridgid, and partly due to polyclay having much less shrinkage. (I'm in a good spot to compare/contrast since I was the ceramics assistant for a few semesters at university). What I love about polyclay, especially in the area I live, is there's no slow curing stage to leather hard, bisque firing, and then full firing stages for something to go wrong on.

 

[LissyB]

It's AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Gryphon]

Ok, here's another egg I formed around an ostrich egg. This one suffered more damage from peeling it off the egg than I was hoping for, but I'll figure out some way of fixing it up.
Here's the side view:

I call it "the fancy egg".

Top view:

Close up of the detail on the bottom:

It looks intricate, the trick is to divide it up and follow a repeating pattern. I used everything from metal stamping tools for leather, to a clickable pen that was out of ink.

 

[hoppy]

I carve emu eggs, I tried chicken eggs, not as much fun.