Annies Crazy World

 
 
 
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    This is Annie Whitsed's Crazy World a world where I stitch the joys and chaos of life into beautifull crazy quilts. email annie@loopylace.com
March 2024
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Scrambled Eggs for Breaksfast, Lunch or Tea March 30th, 2005

In 1999 I was curator for a National Trust ‘Craft in Trust’ Exhibition…One of the Exhibits was a collection of hundreds of painted eggs…They had been painted/dyed by the family and friends over the last 30 years, as on Easter Sunday every year the family got together with a table of dyes, paints and pens, and 2 blown eggs per person, the first one painted goes into the collection the second one can be taken home….As Curator I was invited out to see the collection so that i knew what I would need to display them and to join the family in painting them that year, the middle egg above is the one I brought home….And I was so captivated and enchanted by the collection that I came home, blew some eggs and got the kids and one of their friends painting them that night….I love that the babies hand prints and toddlers splodges look perfect next to the works of art, that some are abstract, some are patterns and others have represent real themes and things…

Painted Eggs 1999

It was a few years before I managed to organize doing it again but in 2003 I got the nieces and nephews over, we had a lovely day and the photo below is the eggs we painted….

Painted Eggs 2003

Here are our 2004 painted eggs….Mine is the red with white spotted Mushroom, I can’t remember why I chose to paint a mushroom but 6 months later while in England I was thrilled to see real red with white spotted mushrooms…My niece Lauren painted the trout because she had been fishing and caught one that morning…My sister did the portrait of Lauren wearing my plastic tiara, which she pops on her head every time she visits…each egg is signed and dated and I can see them becoming a sauce of family memories.

Painted Eggs 2004

A few tips for anyone wanting to paint eggs…

….Use good quality, thick shelled eggs, even then some breakages happen, when it is only a crack PVA white woodworking glue can be dribbled in through one of the holes and rolled around inside to reinforce the cracked area.

….To blow the eggs you need a tiny hole the end you blow into and a slightly larger hole in the end the egg comes out, I use a jewlers drill to do the holes but you can use a needle or drill bit twisted with your fingers. Make sure that you have broken the inner skin of the egg at both ends…..after blowing I wash the inside of the egss with warm soapy water and rinse them well.

After a few years of practice I have learnt that it is best to prepare the eggs ahead of time and I now use a spray undercoat to give a nice working surface.

…I like to keep the organizing as simple as possible and only supply acrylic paints (the kind sold in tubes for students) and permanent ink markers…Should you want to do more variety of decorations Sharon has been surfing around and posting links to sites with decorated eggs….Use Skewers to hold the eggs while painting and a piece of polystyrene foam is handy to stick the skewers in while the eggs are drying.

…Plan on having scrambled eggs for one of your meals on the day, When I have the eggs prepared prior to the day I still blow the eggs on the day which gives me a start on shells for the following year…Enjoy

Our 2005 Eggs

Painted Eggs 2005

LaurenThis is a detail of the handbag that Lauren painted…when she was making the handle it looked awfully wide, I was a bit puzzled as she is good with scale so I questioned her did she really want it that wide?…simple answer “yes, it’s the new fashion” and sure enough her new handbag that I had not seen when she came in, had a huge wide handle……..

Annie

And mine is A Globe of the world, chosen for 2 reasons.

Firstly that since last Easter I have been lucky enough to travel to the other side of the world.

The other reason is for you dear girls and guys that read my Blog and visit my website, before putting a statcounter onto my Blog and website (explained by Sharon on Saturday March 05 2005), I had assumed that my readers would all have been from English speaking countries…How wrong I was, nor can they all read English, the statcounter indicating when a translator has been used and I have had links from French, German and Russian crazy quilting groups….as I saw how many countries I was getting hits from I started making a list and in 8 weeks I have had hits from 80 different countries…I am quite awed and humbled by that statistic…and it fills me with hope for World Peace because ever day when we turn on our TVs, switch on the radio or read the newspaper the news is telling us that this country is fighting with that country and this other country is going to war with that other country But now I can look at my computer screen and list and see all those countries side by side, part of a united, world wide community and I can think/hope that maybe, just maybe one day crazy quilters will take over the world and we will have World Peace…well maybe I am dreaming a bit but I do believe that crazy quilters are gentle, caring, sharing, peace loving folk and the more of us in the world the better………..

One Response to “Scrambled Eggs for Breaksfast, Lunch or Tea”

  1. Susan Says:

    Wow! This has really developed into a wonderful project. The little hands that did the first ones are much more sure now, and what a lovely family collection that is. You’ll need a whole display case for them!

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