Dragon Eggs
My kids, Percy and Inés, found a really cool dragon egg project online. The instructions called for store bought clay and plastic jewels. Sadly, we don’t either of those things in our house right now. Sometimes, we want to make things but don’t have the “right” materials. It’s not always possible to just run out and buy the things we need. Fear not! It is in these situations that we must rely on our own artistry, rather than fancy craft materials to make something beautiful.
For example, look at the Watts Towers. Artist Simon Rodia created this collection of sculptural towers over a span of 33 years, from 1921 to 1954. Simon Rodia didn’t have a lot of money to spend on materials or special tools. He made the entire thing by hand without special equipment. Much of it was made of “found materials” like broken bottles and tiles, small figurines, mirrors, seashells and much more. He called it “Nuestro Pueblo” which means “Our Town” in Spanish. Neighborhood children would bring him broken pieces of pottery to use on the towers.
Let’s take inspiration from the Watts Towers to make our own mosaics using found objects!
Before you begin the project, whip up a batch of this homemade air dry clay:
Air Dry Clay
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup salt
3/4 cup warm water
food coloring
Combine all three ingredients in a large bowl.
Squish the ingredients with your hands until they are all mixed together and you have a ball of clay.
Add a few drops of food coloring to your clay and squish it until the clay is all one color.
Dragon Eggs
Materials
one batch of DIY Air Dry clay (see recipe above)
found mosaic pieces (look for pennies, buttons, sequins, colorful rubber bands, string or yarn, smashed plastic easter eggs or PLASTIC christmas ornaments, shells, pebbles, sea glass)
plastic easter egg or a round stone
Process
Find a plastic easter egg or a round stone. Percy and Inés chose these because they were nice and big. If you’d like to work big, I think a large round stone would work nicely for this project as well. Otherwise, a normal plastic egg works perfectly well.
2. Pinch off small pieces of clay and press them onto the egg or stone. If you are using an egg, cover the seam first. This makes it so that it won’t try to open up while you are working.
3. When your egg is fully covered, you can press your found mosaic pieces into the clay. You can create a design or try to piece them together like a puzzle. Maybe you’d even like to create a picture with your pieces! For our mosaics, we crushed some plastic easter eggs. Look for the ones that only have one half. Then get your shoes on, take them outside on the concrete and STOMP on them really hard. Voila! Mosaic tiles!
Here’s an egg that we wrapped in colorful yarn.
