Tutorial: Daenerys's Dragon Egg

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Read & view below my tutorial on how I created my Drogon egg!

1. Materials: plastic easter egg, medium to large size, round paper punch, and several thin sheets of craft foam. I used 2-3 packs of 32 sheets. The thinnest I have found have been at Dollar Tree.
2. Begin punching all the sheets! Once you get in a groove it becomes easy. If the craft foam sheet is too thick using the circle punch will not work.
3. Cut each of the circles into a tip. Because this part is done by hand, a more organic look is achieved and each scale does not come out exactly the same. This is why I do not use a guitar pick shaped punch.
4. Begin hot gluing! Cover the top with a round bit on each end. I messed this part up, and I should have started on the other end. Dragon scales will point downwards from the pointy tip of the egg, not the other way around! Ooops!
5. See what I did? Just reverse it. :)
6. Covering up the round bits you placed at each end of the egg with some more scales.
7. I did a little bit of distressing to the craft foam by taking a medium sized jagged rock I had and started started raging on it! I drageed it a bit, but mostly started just punching it. If you used sufficient hot glue the scales will not budge!
8. I used a few layers of Mod Podge (the finish here doesn’t matter. I think I have a gloss.) The great thing about using Mod Podge is that when it dries it makes a nice and organic seal around the edge of each scale. I just used an old paint brush to apply it. The blah thing about Mod Podge - it’s pretty great at covering up small imperfections - so a lot of the distress marks that I made do not appear as pronounced after a few layers.
9. Take your egg and start priming it! I use an IKEA bag and a dish or sink strainer/dryer thingy for all my spraypainting. Make sure you are outdoors, and wear a respirator if you got one!
10. These are the primers and paint I used.
11. Obligatory POP! photoBefore gradient painting.
12. The final painting: I used the same technique Kamui talks about in her book on Cosplay Painting. I mixed black and red acrylics, and went to town on it. It may not look like it in the picture, but after I had spraypainted it a basic black, I went over it with a mixed dark reddish brown. I then added some red to the base of each scale, and black on the tip. This created a much more organic and natural gradient. This part took about 2 hours to complete.
13. I turned up the contrast a bit, this is much more true to color! One option I thought about trying was adding the crusted texture to one end. There are numerous ways to adding texture to paint such as salts, sand, or any other kind of grainy texture depending on what effect you want with it. I think I will try that on my next egg - when I will also make the scales to face the right way!

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