Mixed media Easter egg - with tutorial and photo tips

Today, I have created a mixed media Easter egg, for Hobbykunst's blog. I have used a usual paper Easter egg (quite traditional for Norway). The egg has been mounted on the inside of a used packaging tape roll.

There is lots of flowers emerging from the inside of the zip. I have used flowers from a lot of different manufactures (Prima, Wild Orchid and Papirdesign). The flowers has been sprayed dark, then white and purple. There is also a lot of gesso added for effect. I have added some coloured flowers after painting for effect.

I have used different techniques to create structure on the side. Then I have dry painted to get enhance the structure. I have also added wooden gears, painted silver with Metamica.

The base is recycled, and created from the inside of a tape roll. I have added chipboard letters and added metal tape over the top. Then I made the shapes of the letters come trough under the tape. I painted it black with acrylic tape, and dried of most of the paint, so the paint was only left in the nooks and crannies.

Metal tape tutorial

I have added a tutorial I made a long time ago. This was my first ever film tutorial. 

This is in Norwegian, but you should be able to understand the main idea without knowing the language.

After painting the egg, I added some effect on the side by using one of Prima's stencils and adding texture paint. This was painted with silver paint, to create an illusion of metal spill on the sides.

I have used different mediums to create texture on the side of the egg. After this, I painted it black, and dry painted with different kinds of acrylic paint, distress ink and inka gold.  

The flowers are from different brands, and were in all sorts of colours. The good thing about using flowers like this, is that they are spray painted, so you can use all your old flowers in odd colours.

The egg opens in the top. Here you can see how, I added extra space to the top of the egg, to give room for the flowers. 

The egg has been painted with white acrylic paint inside.

How I take and edit photos of my work

I don't really use a photo tent for my work. This is just because a lot of my work is to large for the photo tents you can get in the shop as some of my work is up to 70cm wide or tall. 

You really don't need a fantastic camera to take good photos. A lot of mobiles do take a lot of good photos these days. Although a good camera helps. I use an SLR camera. 

I use a large piece of cardboard as a backdrop. Sometimes I use different backdrops, but often I like it to be plain white. This is also one of the criteria for photos for the Kaisercraft designers. I often let the backdrop curve behind the item, so there will be no lines between the paper under and behind the item I am taking a photo of.

There is very little light during the day in the wintertime in Norway. Some parts of Norway have no light during the winter, while other parts (like where I live) have a few hours light each day. I really try to take the photos while there is daylight. If I don't have the luxury of daylight, I use four or five lamps with bright white light as well as a the flash on the SLR camera. I often use several light sources to avoid shadows on the backdrop.

After taking the photo, I do edit the photos slightly. This could be to remove some of the yellow light (if the light source is yellow) or blue light (if the photos are taken outside). Also, I straighten up the photo and crop it (eg. not getting the sofa and the dog in the photo). There are free programs you can find online to do simple editing, or more expensive programs you get pay a lot of money for, where you can do a lot more.

I am entering these challenges:

• Kaboks - Easter
• Scrappegarasjen - Embossing (with metal tape)
• Scrappelyst - Stoff/tråd (glidelås)
• Scrappiness - Pastel colours and at lest 3 flowers
• Mixed media monthly challenge - Easter eggs
• Papirdesign - Mood Board