we like it wild: panorama egg vase

We have always been a tad obsessed with the tiny worlds inside beautifully frosted sugar eggs. When Jill was a little girl, she got one every Easter and set it on her nightstand to peer into long after the holiday was over (much too long — once it even attracted some new inhabitants . . . ants). We thought it would be fun to make our own tiny flower world this week inspired by those classic sugar panoramas. So, like Brett and her embroidered eggs, we dug out our Dremel and did some egg carving!

CLICK HERE for the full how-to after the jump!

Materials

• large egg
• pencil
• Dremel tool with cutting wheel
• base that allows egg to sit upright
• waterproof epoxy
• decorations and hot glue (optional)
• small floral frog or floral foam that fits inside egg
• variety of tiny blossoms
• tweezers

Instructions

1. Find a large egg to create your floral scene in. We used an ostrich and a goose egg that we purchased with the insides already blown out. (You can order large empty eggs online or purchase them from specialty food stores.)

2. Draw an oval hole in pencil where you’ll carve the hole to peek inside the egg. Use the Dremel tool with a to slice the shell along the line. Take your time, and don’t use too much pressure. Try cutting on a practice egg first if you are using a more expensive egg for your vase.


3. Since we used shells that had the insides blown out already, there were holes in the bottoms. To make the “vase” watertight, we used a waterproof plumbing epoxy to seal the hole and attach the egg to a wood base with a small dip carved into it. You could also try cutting the shell without draining the insides first to eliminate the drainage hole, and then sit the egg in a pretty bowl or shallow cup.

4. Once you have positioned your egg upright in a holder, you can decide if you want to decorate it. We kept it simple and used hot glue to attach some around the edge of the shell to mimic the frosting edge on sugar eggs.

5. Place a small in the bottom of the shell to hold up your stems and add water.

6. Create your tiny flower scene. You don’t need much — just the most petite blossoms! Try to create a variation of height and texture to make it look like a landscape. We used tweezers to pop in lilac, viburnum, muscari, fritillaria, columbine, forget-me-nots and scented geranium.