Elizabeth Vernon with many of the decoupage eggs she created. Vernon will be displaying and selling her work at the Ohio Egg Artist Guild’s upcoming show.
By Mary Beth Breckenridge
Elizabeth Vernon’s canvas is calcium. Vernon is an egg artist who decoupages Victorian designs onto delicate eggshells. Her gleaming varnished creations bear floral motifs, women’s portraits, nursery-rhyme characters, insect images — any vintage design that strikes her fancy.
This time of year, much of her free time is spent snipping paper images, adhering them carefully to eggshells and engaging in the painstaking process of repeatedly coating the eggs with decoupage medium.
It’s all in preparation for her one annual showcase: The Elegant Egg, an annual egg show and sale that will be open at First United Methodist Church near the University of Akron.
The show has been an Easter-season tradition in Akron for about 40 years.
Vernon is one of a dozen or more eggers who has displayed and sold their artwork at the two-day event. Show director Suzanne Gibson said the artists’ work includes hand-painted eggs; eggs carved in filigree designs, zentangle patterns and other motifs; and eggs decorated with the Ukrainian pysanky wax-and-dye process, some in traditional designs and others unconventionally.
Vernon’s connection to the show goes back to childhood, when visiting the show was an annual tradition. “It was a huge, fun thing to do in Akron,” she said.
The inveterate crafter wanted to be part of the show, so she came up with her own decorating niche in the form of Victorian-theme decoupage. It was a logical choice, given that she sells antiques, collects old paper ephemera and has a passion for Victoriana. A longtime volunteer at the University of Akron’s Victorian house museum, Hower House, she runs its gift shop and was even married there.
The Akron resident taught herself the Japanese paper-cutting technique of washi, which she uses to prepare her designs to be adhered to the eggs. The technique involves snipping slits around the perimeter of the design and manipulating the paper so it can be moulded to the egg.
Getting the flat image to look right when it’s laid on the egg’s curved surface can be tricky, she said. She has to make adjustments such as overlapping bits of paper without distorting the image.
Once the design is glued in place, the egg is coated with about 10 layers of decoupage medium — a time-consuming process that requires sanding between each coat. Finally the egg is varnished to give it gloss.
Early on she used an oil-based varnish, not realising the varnish would soak through the layers all the way to the paper. She was disappointed when the varnish created darkened stains and thought the eggs were ruined, but that accident had a happy ending: Eventually the spots evened out, and the eggs developed a yellowish patina that gave them an antique look.
Now, however, she sticks with polyurethane, which doesn’t yellow.
Vernon looks all year for vintage papers to decorate her eggs. She’ll scour shows and shops for picture postcards, children’s book illustrations, Victorian calling cards, old advertisements and other paper items that catch her eye.
A number of eggs she decorated for this year’s show are covered in paper designs that are reproductions of 19th century French fabrics.
She photocopies the papers, which allows her to preserve them as well as reduce or enlarge them to fit her eggs. “I wouldn’t destroy the original,” she said.
The eggs she decorates range in size from palm-size goose eggs to tiny pigeon eggs only an inch or so long, which she bought at an estate sale. The pigeon eggs’ shells were so thin that they would collapse when they were wetted with glue, so she discovered she needed to give them two or three coats of shellac before she could start decorating them.
She also decorates quail eggs, chicken eggs, smaller pullet eggs, sometimes jumbo ostrich eggs and maybe peacock eggs — “any eggs I can find,” she said. Vernon buys her eggs from farmers and prefers eggs from free-range poultry, because their diet results in eggs with thicker shells. She needs eggs that can stand up to the pressure she puts on them when she’s trying to get a paper design to lie flat, she explained.
She blows the centres out of some eggs; others she buys already emptied. Tinier eggs are left intact, so eventually their centres dry out.
Typically she starts work on the eggs around Christmas and keeps working until the egg show, producing 100 to 200 eggs that she’ll offer for sale for about $10 to $40 each. Then she sets the craft aside and moves on to something else.
“By the time you’re done with 100 or 200, it’s pretty much out of your system till next year,” she said with a smile.
Which is her favourite egg?
She couldn’t choose one. “They’re kind of all my favourites,” she said. “Every year my new favourite is the next picture that excites me.” — Akron Beacon Journal/MCT
