Experimenting with Eggs

This is something I've been wanting to do for a couple of years now,,, just to see if it works... but have never got around to.

But as this is the year of the resolution to: 'Finish the unfinished or clear the crap' (ie do all the stuff I keep saying I'll do/ needs doing or get rid of it), i got on with it!

Here is the egg I chose: duck, just because its bigger and whiter than hens' eggs.

I drew on it with white, melted beeswax . This is the tool from an encaustic set I have had for years, often intended to get back to and not done so. It heats like a soldering iron but has a central reservoir like a dip pen. When it's hot, you dip it in the wax block and it draws up a small amount which you can then draw with. Not meant for eggs but why not?

I know from experiments year 4 have done at school that vinegar dissolves egg shells, leaving just the rubbery membrane and the egg inside. So I wondered if some of the shell was coated in wax, whether it would stop that part from dissolving and leave a great tracery pattern of shell.

Here it is in the white vinegar. The hope is that the vinegar will eat the shell where there is no wax, leave it intact where there is wax, and that I can pop the membrane and peel it out without breaking the delicate pattern, leaving a beautiful egg tracery.

I have no idea whether it will work, but husband and I have had great fun taking photos of the bubbles that formed, with different lighting on them. More of those later.

Wish me luck and I'll let you see the results - whatever they may be!