Less Successful Project for Easter

I am often in the middle of some kind of project or other. Martha Stewart often manages to inspire me to give something a try. So in her April issue she had these paper mache Easter egg table decorations. The ones in the magazine were very elegant. And the instructions didn't sound to difficult. So I decided to give it a try.
I had not done any paper mache since I was in grade school. I got my supplies together and thought it would be fun to document the process. So this first photo is as I was tearing all my strips of paper. Couldn't use newspaper like in grade school, because it wasn't going to be painted. And as Martha suggested, I used gold tissue paper on the inside so it would look neat on the inside.

Next I blew up the balloon. It took me two tries to get one I thought egg looking. To try and contain the mess, I put it in a cardboard box. Then on a small glass bowl so I could work on it. First off, the bowl was way to small to work. As you put the wet paper on the balloon, it becomes heavier and starts to slide around. So I had to get a bigger bowl, which was also one of my nice bowls.

Then I started with the gold paper strips in the modpodge and water mix. The other problem, is you really don't know how much paper you are going to need and how much to prepare. I thought I had plenty, but I was wrong. I had enough gold ready, but not the parchment paper.

This is the inner layer of gold. Kind of gloppy looking. You can see my cat, Nigel, is on the table because he wanted to help too.

So this is the parchment layer. Even though I had the table protected with newspaper and the balloon in a box, in a bowl; I still managed to get mod podge on my nice table cloth and on the floor.

Here it is done and drying. They said let it dry for 24 hours. It took it several days to really get dry. And lets not discuss how hard it was to get all the glue off of my nice white bowl afterwards.

So they say mark a jagged line and using a craft knife cut it open. I could have cut it open about a third of the way down and used the upside down top as a stand for the bottom. But after seeing how much of a mess it all was, I decided I wasn't going to make another one. So I cut it about in half so I would have two. I also used a black marker to mark where to cut. Not a good idea of course, because you can see the line after I cut it.

So here is the finished product. Not anywhere near as cute and elegant as Martha's. I'm sure my friends won't tell me that, but I know it's true. Another thing, She had the stuff inside arranged really nice with the grass and all. I think she must have had something hard in there to hold the stuff up because the Easter grass was so soft that my things were just sinking. I put in extra grass and called it a day. Notice how they have to sit on little glass bowls so they don't tip over.

They will be alright on a table full of other things, but chalk it down to experience. It's not a project I am likely to repeat!