As a person who eats fried egg sandwiches for breakfast semi-regularly, I can’t help but look at all those broken shells, and wonder about what might have been. There is hope, however, for the unbroken. Egg taxidermy, or as you know it, Fabergé.
The embalming process is fairly simple. You just need a canopic Tupperware container, and a needle or safety pin. I have some thread through the needle, because it adds some nice leverage when you are trying to poke through the egg shell. When you are poking at the egg shell, don’t be afraid to be firm with your pointy implement of choice. Egg shells are tough.
If you are having trouble getting the needle through, try using a very small screwdriver, of the sort used to adjust glasses. Make a hole in the top and the bottom, and really wiggle that needle around inside. You want to break up the membrane and yolk of the egg.
You’ll notice that this hole is rather larger than the one on the top. This is to make everything come out easier. How you may ask? Blow through the top hole and into the canopic Tupperware. The egg white and yolk should slough out easily, provided the exit wound is large enough. Stand there a moment, admiring the strangely hollow calcium deposit in your hand. Ponder smashing the shells over your own head, or others as a prank. Remember to rinse out the shells with water, you don’t want it to start to smell in a couple days.
Look, all clean and dripping water into the carton. Seriously, these will drip for a while. One of these eggs will be abandoned. Can you guess which one?
Get out your trendy walky-talky variant and call out, “Crafting supplies! Assemble!” You might not get the A team, but you will get a team. My team consists of Ribbon Ribboff the Russian rhythmic gymnast/grillmaster, Woody of the Elmer’s Glue Gang, and the Acrylic four! You may notice what looks like a square piece of bread with a hole in it. That is my handy dandy painting stand made out of salt dough, because what is a crafting article without wasting food? What about the egg innards from before? I fried them up in a large pan with bacon bits. Not wasted.
Starting off simply, I wrapped ribbon the long way around the egg, and glued it at the top and bottom. Keep in mind, there may be water still coming out of the bottom of the egg. Be sure to reapply glue if that is the case.
After waiting a bit for it to set, I made another loop.
Then a loop around the middle, and some that only reached that loop. It really helps to glue on the convergent spots, making everything below more firmly anchored as well.
Different egg, familiar paint. Egg shell is such a nice color that I decided to do some outline sort of bird figures. If you don’t like how part of your painting turned out, get the needle from before, and scrape away the paint.
Since I only had fall colors, I decided to make a phoenix. It looks a little wonky, but I added more and now it looks like it does in the header for this article. Taken together, there is a nice progression from egg to bird to fire chicken, and so I took a toilet paper tube and cut it a bit more than in half, thus creating a nice height progression.
Eggs Fabergé can be an exquisite art, gifted to Russian royalty, or it can be a fun afternoon activity. It turns out you don’t have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, you can make them into art instead.
Have I inspired you? Do you also have a terrible habit of wasting food? I would be very interested to see if others have followed in my rambling footsteps, so if you have made something inspired by one of my articles, take a picture and send it to [email protected]. Label it: Crafts for Brandon. If you do, that picture will be at the end of my next article, with your name attached. If you made something beyond the fantastic scope of my chronicle, you might consider writing a guest article and sending it to that same email address to be considered as a guest post. It is always inspiring to see what art you may see in the mundane.
Answer time: Which egg did I abandon? The middle, right one.
About Brandon Quist
Brandon is originally from Olmsted Falls, Ohio. He has studied both at Baldwin Wallace college and Brigham Young University, and is currently pursuing Chemical Engineering, among other things. He considers himself a jack of all trades, and a master of none. In his spare time, Brandon enjoys knitting, guitar, reading, origami, writing, and photography.
