Creative Christmasey Pursuits

 I've taken down all of my Christmas decorations at this point, but I have still been working on one ornament repair job.  Years ago, when we had chickens, I was so enamored with their first little poulet eggs that I blew them out and saved them, displaying them in a vintage egg basket.  Some years after that I had the idea to turn them into Christmas ornaments.  I kept to a very natural theme using Swedish straw ornaments and burlap and pinecones that I glued satin ribbon on.  I have incorporated them into several other years' trees, whenever they seemed to fit into my theme.

They were very simply made with things I had on hand, floral wire, beads and sequins.  The true focus is the natural beauty of the egg, I really just needed a method of hanging them.

It was pretty rudimentary.

Over the years I lost a few to wear and tear,  There were some left that were barely hanging on.  I had resolved to throw them away and had even put the two very damaged ones in the compost bin.  But as I was searching through Etsy for additional jewelry making supplies for making a few of my own push pin ornaments from scratch, I began to see pieces that I thought would look nice on these eggs.  I thought that if I glued some larger bead caps onto the ends, I could not only stabilize the existing cracks, but also run wire through the eggs without risk of cutting into the shells.  I rescued the ones I had thrown out, used some broken egg shells from breakfast to glue over the larger holes and placed an order for "jewelry findings".

And here they are today.  All repaired.  I only lost one in the process.

The small one cracked from end to end when I was tightening the hanging loop but I was able to wrap it securely with double sided tape to save it and then cover the tape with gold thread.

These end pieces are set in clear Elmer's glue which centers them as well as can be accomplished and secures the shells from cracking.  The biggest problem I ran into is that the holes on each end are not perfectly aligned.  When I blew them out I had no inkling of using them for a craft project.  If I were to make more of these I would be much more careful about my hole placement.  Still, they look a whole lot more intentional than they did with green wire and sloppy holes.

There are no two exactly alike.  I found that certain pieces worked better than others.  I got a chance to work with different bead sizes and get design ideas for the push pin ornaments.

I also built up a collection of necessary tools and supplies.

My sister brings me her farm fresh eggs every other week.  I showed her the ornaments and we will be on the lookout for appropriate and interesting eggs.  I would like to get back to an even dozen.