Dragon Egg Tutorial

Over the weekend my mother in law brought a few of her older halloween magazines. I flipped through them, seeing a lot of stuff I already knew, but then a small picture of a cracked egg bursting with green light caught my eye.

Perfect Dragon Egg!

I've been wanting to make a dragon skull for awhile now (and I will once I figure out the rigging. It is happening.) and you can't have a half rotted skull without some hatching eggs around. The problem is that the tutorial began with "take a plastic egg and cut into it."

Yeah, not a lot of smooth, white, plastic eggs around. Except, it is easter.

I hunted through a bunch of stores looking for any large plastic eggs people decorated their lawns with and came up empty handed until Walgreens.

The matryoshka easter egg

It cost $8 and now I have a ton of smaller plastic eggs I have no idea what to do with.

The first step was yanking off the handle. With a sharpie I drew a crack in the top part, pulled out my dremel and probably cut a year off my life from the burning plastic smell.

I also cut a small section out of the bottom for the lights. Martha's tutorial called for using a mason jar to hold the lights (which makes some sense), but the only mason jar I had as a guide was holding skittle vodka.

Got your crack? Okay, now to do something about the fact the egg falls apart at the midsection.

Enter monster mud.

Monster mud is 5 parts joint compound to 1 part latex paint. I had some left over from my monster mudding last year but it was a bit dry so I added water, more joint compound and prayed it would work.

Monster mud gives a great rocky appearance, so if you want an egg that looks like the monster is part sediment or is petrified, really glob the mud on. Due to the age of my mud it got globbed on anyway, so I sanded parts down after.

It didn't stick perfectly to the plastic of the egg, which worked in my favor as it created hairline cracks all over the place.

Once the mud dried in about a day, I painted the egg in a layer of white latex paint. This was to help seal off the joint compound in case the egg gets wet and keep it all from peeling off.

After that, it was just using alternating tans and golds to make the egg whatever color I wanted. I thought about doing something crazy like red or green, but decided I wanted it to look more like the old dinosaur eggs.

Now just stick some lights in the bottom and turn her on.

The baby is in

 I'm going to try and find a string of red lights with a battery pack. It seems the easiest way to jam it all inside the egg for Halloween. I'll also try and make a nest out of sticks, but I might get another egg or two after Easter. Mama dragon's gonna have a clutch.

 That's how to make your own dragon or dinosaur egg.