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The company I work for gave us a holiday on Thursday, January the 1st. I decided to make it a long weekend and took vacation on Friday, the 2nd. That gave me four full days off work. And I made the best of them.

I’ve already told you I finished up Bernie’s quilt, thereby knocking out one of my New Year Resolutions. Well, I also decided to start making some polymer clay eggs.

Little Chicken Racing Team posted a nice tutorial about it making polymer clay eggs on the BackYardChickens website. I’ve been wanting to do something special with blown out eggs, but I have very little talent or creativity. When I read about polymer clay eggs I thought “Well, this looks like something even I can do.” Bernie and I each eat an egg for breakfast every morning, so I blew them out and kept the shells to work with.

The really cool thing about polymer eggs is that you can work with the clay and come up with all sorts of designs - and it’s really hard to mess it up! The first one I made was yellow and purple. Then Bernie asked for a black and orange egg. He’s a Harley guy - what can I say? When I finished with Bernie’s egg, I had some of the clay cane left over, so I made another out of it, and substituted just plain orange on the bottom when I ran out. Here’s a picture:

How cool are those? I left the hole in the top of them so I can make ornaments out of them.

The most difficult part of the whole process is blowing out the eggs - and that really is not all that difficult. Just use a darning needle and poke out holes in the top and the bottom of the egg. You want the holes to be bigger than the needle, but not much bigger. Be sure to use the needle to break up the yolk inside of the shell - you’ll thank me for that tip when you get to the next step. Put your lips around one of the holes and blow the egg out of the other. It may take a little bit of work and a lot of air, but you will soon have an empty egg shell! Now be sure to eat that egg - or feed it back to your chickens. They’ll thank you for it.

Once the shell is empty, I use a syringe to squirt some oxine and water into the shell and rinse it out well. You can use a little bleach with water if you don’t have oxine. If you have a syringe with the needle, I have read that some people use this to remove the egg from the shell. I don’t have a needle, so I blow it out the old fashioned way.

Let the egg dry out for a day or two, and then you are ready to begin applying your clay. Little Chicken Racing Team (LCRT) gives a great tutorial, so I won’t repeat it here. After you’ve finished applying your clay bake the egg(s), sand and polish as LRCT describes. And voila! You’ve got some really pretty polymer clay eggs!

I plan to make several of these for my Christmas Victims next year. It’s a fair amount of work, but my Christmas Victims are worth it. And they know what happens if they complain…..

Bee Free,
Penny

I am totally on top of my New Year Resolutions. And I mean totally. Look what I finished today:

Those are Bernie’s hands and feet poking out. He’s a little camera shy today. I meant to take a picture of the back of the quilt, but by the time I remembered Bernie was wrapped in it and had Priscilla on his lap. I mentioned it, but he said “Too late. Silly is sleeping now.” We call Priscilla “Silly”. If you knew her, that would make a lot more sense.

I tend to be a little obsessive-compulsive. Once I set my mind to something, it completely consumes me. I worked all day yesterday and all day today on that quilt, and finished it this afternoon. Bernie is thrilled. I’m not sure if that’s because he’s happy to have the quilt, or happy to have his wife back. He really doesn’t like when I get obsessed with something. I used to read two books a week. And when I read a book, I would become completely engrossed in it and do nothing else. Bernie finally told me it was him or the books. A man can only take so much. Then I took to raising chickens. I really hope he doesn’t give me an ultimatum on that one……

And in keeping with my New Year Resolutions, I had a nice glass of wine and two hard boiled eggs.

I am so totally on top of my New Year Resolutions. So are my hens. They layed me 14 eggs today. Now if only Bernie will keep me supplied with wine…

Bee Free,

Penny