I’ve been making Ukranian eggs since I was a child… admittedly taking years and years off at a time, but I’m interested in doing it again.(Note that my style is not the traditional style content-wise. It’s not snowlflakes and stick deer and so on, it’s my own designs.) I believe the traditional method is to use raw egs and over time the inside of the egg dries out and hardens. This is true. However, a box of eggs I’d made in Tucson, AZ (harsh hot climate) that had been years old, sitting in a closet, and quite dry suddenly exploded and smelled REALLY BAD. So, lost art + big stink… not something I care to repeat.
I’m pretty good at blowing an egg. (Shut up and get your mind out of the gutter.) There are problems of course, in that the dye process is harder with a hollow, fragile egg, and also the end product is extremely fragile. I was thinking… there must be some substance that you could use to fill the egg after you’re done decorating it, possibly before adding shellac or polyurethane to seal it. I just dont’ know what that might be. I’m afraid of using just any old thing because some things expand or contract when they dry and I don’t want to break the egg that way either.
Things I’ve considered: dribbling in plaster. Dribbling in solid wax (not the beeswax), squirting in silicone caulk… maybe not totally solid but a 1/2 inch thick coating on the inside of the shell? But surely I’m not the first. I’d rather learn the mistakes of those before me before I destroy works I’ve put hours into, you know?
So does anyone know of a way to fill a hollow eggshell so that it’s not quite so fragile?
And a side note: there are people who cut intricate patterns into eggshells… what is the best tool for this that wouln’t just crush and smush the egg? I think that an egg with an oval window in it that had something interesting inside would be really neat, but I don’t want to mangle the eggshell trying to cut it. I do have a Dremel if that’s useful…
Yuck! I can’t imagine having a raw egg sitting around for ages. I’d definitely do a pinhole egg blowing technique or something. I remember helping my sister clean out eggs like that with lung pressure and it was a son of a bitch. Can’t you Dremel a tiny hole on either end and then blow it out with a bicycle pump and a sports ball needle? Or better yet, a compressor.
I was going to suggest maybe trying something like marine-tex. It’s an epoxy putty that is used to repair dings in fiberglass boat hulls. It can be sanded and is designed to adhere really well to stuff. I think it might work with an eggshell. I use it on various sundry parts of my catamaran and it is pretty easy to use.
I don’t have a problem blowing them by lung pressure. I’ve done it lots. Typically I end up doing it after the egg is decorated though, otherwise they’re hard to keep in the dye. Whatever I use it has to be something that fills or partially fills the inside of the egg, rather than going on the outside… so it has to be fairly liquidy/pourable at least to start…
In that case, you might be able to use epoxy resin. You could probably use some sort of cooking syringe. It has a tendency to set up pretty quickly so you should have a lot of eggs ready to go all at the same time. You can probably adjust the setup time by carefully varying the amount of catalyst (hardener) that you use. It’s pretty messy though. It might be impossible to not get it on the shell. If you succeed, you will have an extremely tough egg.
I think you are too young to remember, but they used to have these god awful oversized grape bunches for table decorations in the 60’s and 70’s. I believe those were made from resin.
Thinking more about it, maybe plaster of paris would work. It’s not very viscous when first mixed and rock solid when set. That’s why it’s so good to use for cast bronze molds. It doesn’t set up ridiculously fast so it should be easier to control.
I think it is pretty good about maintaining its volume, once again a reason it works well for bronze castings using the lost wax technique. I could be mistaken though, but it’s pretty cheap, easy to use, and probably worth trying.
I’ve made pysanky from blown eggs. We put liquid acrylic on the outside. Just poured some in our hands, and then rubbed them all over the egg. It dries clear, and is very strong.
I know you said you wanted to put something inside, but I thought you might be interested in what an actual pysanky teacher suggested.