Time for another round of submissions! Note for next week: I’m going to do a recipe post with cookies and such, so if you want to send me holiday photos of some of your treats, meals or edible gifts, that would be fun.
On to the festive photos. This is one of my favorites, I’m in awe of these eggs from Cheryl from Maryland:
Re Holiday Joy — during the 1960s and 1970s, when I was a child, my mother was a regular consumer of Womens magazines dedicated to homemaking and enriching your children. Her favorite was McCalls, which had regular crafting articles for semi talented children. I was my mother’s guinea pig, which actually was genius on her part as I became an art historian and had a 30 year career in the arts with the Smithsonian Institution.The craft experience which I still do today was painting blown eggs for Easter, which I as a teen turned into Christmas Decorations. Many of those I still have are at least 45 years old. My mother got the idea from McCalls magazine where Betsy McCall painted blown eggs and hung them on tree branchesThe eggs are regular grocery store eggs, size extra large. Take them out of the fridge for a couple of hours, use a metal lacer for a turkey or similar to poke holes at the top and bottom. Use the lacer to punch the yolk and stir the interior egg stuff up so it is as liquid as possible. Over a bowl, blow on the top hole until the egg contents come out. My mother had great lung power and had useful egg contents for brownies, etc. Me, I throw away the contents. Rinse the egg with water through the holes, set in an egg carton on the counter to drip for a few days.Then, draw what you want on the egg. I use pencil, then paint with watercolors (classic elementary school Binney and Smith), with black acrylic paint to give the work an illuminated manuscript/wood cut look. I use thin color washes on the egg and blot the color often with a tissue.After you like what you did, either use a twist tie to make a hanger, or use a long needle, metallic thread and beads to make a hanger. I can crochet, so I make a chain with beads threaded through the egg. I’m sorry I can’t explain how I do it as I’ve been doing it for so long.
So, some images. I was and still am a devotee of European art from about 1300 to 1500, which I think you can tell. Also King Arthur and fantasy. My mother-in-law has about 30 eggs on a tree with the nativity story (the image shows mostly angels). I have about 45; various cousins and friends have some as well.
