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#jewelleryfacts365 67/365 Platinum fact

Thursday, April 7, 2016

The first European reference to platinum appears in 1557 in the writings of the Italian humanist Julius Caesar Scaliger as a description of an unknown noble metal found between DariƩn and Mexico, "which no fire nor any Spanish artifice has yet been able to liquefy".

Caesar Scaliger 

DIY by VZBRELO girls. Painting techniques for the wooden eggs

It took me a a few days to decide if I should publish this guest post by the VZBRELO girls after Easter. Well, Easter is over, right? Not everywhere, mind you. Russia is going to have it in almost three weeks from now (this is where my guest bloggers live). Then I had a second thought... You know, this is a DIY project for the wooden eggs. It's not like they are going to go bad or anything :) It is a fun project and you can make them... well... if you start now, you could be coming up with a whole lot of wooden eggs for next Easter! (or next after next one!) So, here it is!

(By the way, you can find all their guest posts here)
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Hi, Maria and Tatiana is here again! You know, not everybody had Easter this year yet. If you've not had it yet, there is still time for you to make wooden souvenir eggs for this year's Easter. Otherwise, you have a whole year in front of you to make lots of wooden eggs! (there will be one more DIY project next week, so stay tuned!)

We had photographed this project two years ago, but got around this year only to make it into a blog post. An Easter egg DIY is never going to be too old to be published, right? )

You will need:

- Wooden eggs;
- Thick brushes for staining;
- Fine brushes for painting (squirrel hair works the best);
- Acrylic paints: white, black, metallic (or any colors that you prefer);
- A sponge;
- Soft sandpaper (I have one that is set on the foam and I love it for this project);
- Water-based stains or the color ink as another option;
- Very fine scissors;
- Self-adhesive paper;
- Lacquer. I had the gloss acrylic lacquer that I used for my wooden eggs.


Cut some pretty grasses and herbs from the self-adhesive paper. You can pre-draw them with a pencil or just unleash your imagination and start cutting! )


Glue all the prepared beauties onto the wooden eggs. Then take a sponge, dip it in the white acrylic paint and start applying the paint by lightly tapping the sponge over the grasses. The goal here is not to paint the whole egg's surface, but to create a kind of "haze" that isdenser at some spots and almost transparent at the others.


After the paint has dried (and acrylics usually dry fast), remove the stencils, then stain the eggs. I use water-based stains. Usually the eggs need two layers of stain. I am willing to experiment and sometimes add a little bit of drafting ink or writing ink. You can also experiment by adding some watercolors.


You can stop right here, if you like. The eggs are pretty already! ) but I am not going to stop now )

I used soft sandpaper trying to remove small defects without touching the paint too much. Then I took a thin brush and painted more grasses right over the background herbs' silhouettes. Just like this:


Finally, I used the metallic paints to go over the leaves and the seeds. I try to choose the paints that go together, so I used silver color for the blue eggs and gold color for the yellow eggs. 


Well, not much left now! We need to varnish the eggs, using, possibly, more than just one layer of the lacquer. When it is all finished we can  start being proud of our work) Enjoy it yourself and make your family members and friends happy with the unique handmade souvenirs :)


We hope that you find this DIY project rather simple and approachable. We are happy to answer any questions!

Tatiana and Maria, the VZBRELO duet :)

We are always happy to new guests and friends:
Online shop (Russian), another online shop (Russian)
 
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