Primary materials for egg: Newspaper, tape, paper napkins, glue, acrylic paint.
For holder: Aluminum foil, tape, paper napkins, glue, rocks, coat-hanger wire, acrylic paint.
I made this for a dragon enthusiast. For the most part I used techniques from my mask making, and as you can see, some of the colors and shapes are quite similar to other projects I’ve done.
The egg was fairly straightforward to make. I made a core out of newspaper, and coated it in a thin layer of paper-napkin mache. I then applied the “scales” to make the pattern on the surface, and cleaned them up with a grinder. After a few more rounds of filling in spots and grinding and sanding, it was ready to paint.
This process took a while just because of drying time, and because the shape meant I couldn’t work on the whole project at once. But nothing particularly unexpected happened to slow things down beyond that.
I went through various ideas for how to paint this, but eventually settled on black with silver and gold highlights. For both the paint and the design and I wanted something that looked “dragon-y” but wasn’t ridiculous.
As soon as I started making this, I realized it needed a holder, so I began building one at the same time. I wanted something that would look good with the egg but wasn’t too big, complicated, or distracting.
There’s coat-hanger wires in the “arms” for strength. One innovation I’m happy with is I imbedded three small rocks in the bottom, so they contact the ground, and I don’t need to worry about the holder’s paper-napkin material being worn off or having to put plastic feet on it or something. I painted it the ancient bony look, and also added a few metallic highlights to tie in with the egg, but you can’t really them see in the pictures.
Overall this was a fun little project that I’m quite happy with.