Having your own dragon egg is the next best thing to having your own dragon, right? Here are some ideas for a craft your family can do together. You can choose how to adapt the craft based on the appropriate level of difficulty and what materials you have on hand or can easily get.
Egg One: Beginner
- Fairly easy
- Requires aluminum foil and clay, play dough or similar modeling material
- Optional: food coloring or liquid watercolor paint, decorative bits
This is the egg I would recommend for children, especially those on the younger side.
I found a small package of air-dry modeling clay at a dollar store for a couple of dollars. Follow the link for detailed instructions on how to make an egg with an aluminum foil center and a clay surface a half-inch thick or more. You can add color to the clay now or paint the egg once it is dry.
If you have beads or pretend gemstones like the ones in the thumbnail picture, great! You could also use sequins, artificial pearls from a broken necklace or beach glass and tiny seashells from your last trip to the beach. Press your decorations into the clay until they stick. You can also press more lightly to make a textured design on the surface of the egg.
Let the clay dry for about 24 hours. If you want to paint the egg, add some details in a contrasting paint color, you can do that once the egg is dry.
Egg Two: Intermediate
- This craft is for someone old enough to be trusted with permanent markers
- Requires plastic pop-apart eggs (or something similar), markers, embellishments and glue
- Glitter or metallic markers are much preferred
Why do I insist on permanent markers for this egg?
When I tried to draw the scales with a standard marker, all my markings came off on my fingers! The permanent marker worked much better.
Also, keep in mind that it will be easier to glue on decorations that are flat on one side. And since plastic eggs are so light, it is important to spread out decorations evenly so the egg will not fall over.
Egg Three: Advanced
- Best for someone mature and patient
- Requires foam egg base and lots of thumb tacks with flat heads
- Mod Podge and paint or nail polish are recommended
If you don’t have a foam egg, you might try substituting a different shape for the base. I found some small spheres, and my mom pointed out that some reptile eggs are closer to the shape of a ball than a chicken egg anyway!
How do you get that nifty dragon scale effect? Slowly, very slowly. Just stick thumbtacks into a foam base, overlapping them slightly so they look like scales. Warning, this will take lots of thumb tacks. How many? Well, covering about a quarter to a third of a two-inch sphere took about 50 (see below).
One you have all the thumbtacks in place, a coating of Podge will help make sure that they stay there. If you follow the link above, it has detailed instructions for painting them with the ombre effect in the photo. However, I talked to another children’s librarian who picked up bottles of glittery nail polish at the dollar store and said they worked great!