Final image of Easter eggs and Ellie in the background, photo by Morag Noffke.

As you might know I have been meeting up with Ellie from Elliementalist for Victorian Crafting. Please visit her blog post on crafting Easter Eggs for a more detailed explanation.

My process.
I had blown my eggs beforehand and had tried dying my eggs with organic colouring such as turmeric and beetroot. Unfortunately things didn’t go swimmingly well which is often not surprising for artists and creative people to come up against design challenges. I discovered two things: my dye colours were insipid, definitely not my cuppa tea and trying to dye empty eggs (blown eggs) is tricky as they float. In most of my creative processes I seem to do a lot of experimenting before I come up with a solution for what I envisage. Actually there are times when I am totally surprised at what I do create because it was nothing like what I had envisaged. This was one of those times.

When I am experimenting I go through a gauntlet of feelings and when this happens extreme grumpiness is one of them. As Ellie explained after trying quite a few ideas we scrapped dying and inscribing designs on the eggs and decided to draw designs on instead. This was a delightful solution and pastime.

Materials.
Blown eggs
Felt tip markers
Coloured highlighters

I wanted my eggs and handmade gift boxes to match so I created my egg design from the boxes.

After penciling in the image I used a felt tip marker to create the outline. Morag Noffke.

Morag Noffke

Image by Morag Noffke

Image by Morag Noffke.

Morag Noffke

Morag Noffke

Here are my gift boxes.

Pink gift box by Morag Noffke.

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It was fun to do a project together with Ellie and to feel satisfied with the end results even though it probably doesn’t look anything like what the Victorians would have done. I don’t mind as that, to me, is the beauty of creativity: it is up to us, as creators, how we design and come up with the end results. For me, art and creativity are often about the process.

Take care – and do something fun.