Crystal Eggs

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

I hope you're having a great week so far.

Today is usually Retailer Wednesday where I feature a new or different rubber stamp designer, retailer, or other business to aid in our craft. But since Easter is only a few days away I wanted to get in a few more crafty techniques before the big day!

Crystal Eggs

This is a fun technique that uses clear micro beads! Mmmm gotta love those little buggers. With a bit of glue (and mess) you can turn anything into a crystal delight!

Supplies:

Images - Stamped or Computer Generated - on Tissue

Preserve It! (if using comp. generated images)

Collage Glue

Glossy Accents

Micro Beads

Dye Inks (optional)

Instructions:

1. (Optional) If desired you can color your eggs with dye ink and an Ink Blending Foam. I colored one but left the rest natural.

2. Gather your tissue paper images. Now you could stamp your images onto the tissue paper with a waterproof ink. I didn't have any Easter images small enough to fit my eggs so I am using the second option - collage images printed onto tissue paper. (I used the Vintage Easter Postcards I shared with you on Sunday.) If this is the method you are going to use you will need to seal your images with something like Preserve It! by Krylon. Just a quick spray, let it dry 10 minutes and your images are ready to go.

3. Trim your images...I like to use pinking shears because the notches are like little relief cuts for less wrinkles in the finished image. A must when you're working on curved surfaces. ;)

4. Apply a layer of collage glue to your egg. Now you'll need to decide ahead of time where you want your image...for one of my eggs I added images around the center, for the 2nd I added one main image and for my third egg I added smaller images over the entire egg.

5. After you have applied the glue, lay the image on your egg; smooth the image and make sure all air bubbles have been removed. I like to wet my finger with a bit of extra glue for this step...it helps smooth the tissue and allows your finger to glide over the surface without tearing the tissue. Let the tissue dry.

6. Pour your micro beads in a small container.

7. Apply a thin layer of Glossy Accents to the images/egg. This is a fun but messy step...you'll need paper towels read to wipe your fingers off.

8. Place the GA egg into the container with the micro beads. Coat the egg with micro beads. During this step you're going to need to keep your fingers off as much as possible. I just shake the egg around until it's completely coated.

9. Place your eggs in a safe place to dry....

10. After the Glossy Accents have dried it's time to de-bead the extra layers from your egg. I know....What???? Well when you apply the beads to the egg you'll notice that in some spots there is one layer of beads while other areas have 2-3 or more layers of beads. For the best results you want one layer of micro beads over the image. Too many layers and your image will be obscured. Hold your egg over a tidy tray or box lid and gently run your finger over the surface of the micro beads/egg. You'll notice that the extra layers flake off easily....I save these beads for later use. If you run into a tough area that just doesn't want to come off no worries...one or two small spots won't hurt.

If you find you have areas where there are no micro beads at all you can go back and add more Glossy Accents & Beads or cover those areas with other embellishments.

Now your eggs are done...You could go ahead and string them as they are or embellish further with whatever your heart desires.

Here are two of my eggs (the third wasn't dry yet.)....

I thought I should point out that I used 1/2 tube of micro beads for 3 eggs...two that were totally covered and one that had about 1/2 covered.

So, what do you think?

Pretty fun huh?

I'll share the embellished eggs with you tomorrow along with another fun Easter-y project!

Till then friends, go get inky!!