Dragon eggs are kind of palish

Newspaper ready
to go

This idea was inspired by this blog post here about not doing crafts with children. I get the impression from her picture of bunting that this blogger is probably a more skilled crafty person than me. However, I must gently disagree with her decision to use ordinary eggs as dragon eggs - surely they would be bigger?

Before I had even finished reading the blog post, I decided that we would make a dragon egg using papier mache around a balloon. I Googled to find recipes for the the paste and congratulated myself on not throwing out the junk mail newspapers that I had saved from before Christmas in case of ever doing papier mache.  Tearing the strips is quite a pleasing task. I was also pleased that I hadn't used up all the balloons doing these.

Balloon and paint brushy
 things

While boiling up the water for the paste, the Zeds played with a balloon each. Predictably, it ended in tears when Z2 burst his. I distracted him from his misery with a couple of pre-lunch Smarties, then we ate luch, Z2 was despatched for his nap and Z1 and I sat down at the kitchen table to get going.

First layer
hanging to dry

I asked Z1 if she wanted a music on my laptop but she said she would prefer it to be quiet because otherwise she would be distracted. She was right and I was supposed to have learned that lesson already. We worked together happily and harmoniously and chatted about what colour we should paint it when it was finished. She told me that dragon eggs are kind of palish.


After she had gone to bed, I slapped another layer on to the now dry first layer to speed up the process as I didn't know how long Z1 would be willing to string this activity out. It did tie in quite nicely with the snow dragon which we made between layers so we had a bit of a dragon theme in the house.

Z1 in action painting
and glittering the egg

The finished dragon egg
hanging above our sink
Incidentally, our
dragon egg is not palish
but it is glittery.

Painting and glittering took place while I prepared Z1's school lunch and cooked rice for dinner. I didn't notice any glitter in the lunch or the rice but either way, thanks to reading an article about pregnancy tests for rhinos in Dublin zoo a few years ago, I am confident that glitter will not be harmful if ingested. I know human digestive systems are probably a bit different to those of rhinos but zoos are usually pretty careful about what they feed their animals so I am sure it's fine.



You may also be interested to know: 

• The paste recipe I used (in the highlighted box at the bottom of the linked page) made a lot of paste. A large mixing bowl full. We have most of it left. I did add salt to stop it going mouldy but if anyone has a recipe for making it edible, please do send it my way.
• We used some of Z1's discarded drawings on plain white paper for the final layer to make it easier to paint without newsprint showing through.