Image provided by: University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, NE
About The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 1962)
A shelf in the Killeen living room dis plays the art work of many hours' doing. The empty parakeet egg shell is shown at the right end of the gradu ating sizes on the top shelf. This closeup shows the intricate sew ing on the velvet lining of a jewelry case, gathered to fit the top. Little pearls and pink seashells form the flower design. WHO SAYS THROW AWAY THE EGG SHELL? ti I * A nd there you have it in an eggshell,” Mrs. Caro line Killeen might tell you after showing her fasci nating hobby. Most housewives throw away chicken eggshells or put them through the disposal. But the ordinary eggshell becomes, a thing to look at through the skilled hands and imaginative artistry of this Dell Rapids, South Dakota housewife and mother of five school-age children. Her patience is a great attribute to her art. So is the patience of her family as she spends extra hours in her hobby room after supper. Even little five year-old Patty is interested in Mama’s hobby and knows each tiny eggshell scene and describes her favorites explicitly to visitors. Their eyes beam as she shows each intricate scene in a shell. Chicken eggs are not the only source of shells for Mrs. KiHeen’s hobby. She has goose eggshells as large as six or seven inches in length. However, she has not found an appropriately delicate scene for a tiny parakeet shell a friend has given her. Scenes inside the shells vary from snowmen. Santa Clauses and Easter bunnies, to ballet dancers. 3 1. First Mrs. Killeen cuts a circular "window" in each egg with a razor blade. She later evens off the rough edge with manicure scissors. 2. She then paints the shell inside and out with tempera paints and then shellacs over this. 3. She then decorates the edge of the egg opening with gold tape or a tiny string of pearls, then glues flower designs made of tiny colored seashells. ^ A 4. The "standard" on the bottom is a small plastic ring of pearls glued on. Hawaiian figures, Chinese themes or Madonna figurines. Store-bought images of ballerina dolls, farm ani mals and reindeer are sometimes found in children’s toy departments or on party favor counters. But Mrs. Killeen constructs snowmen out of poppit beads, cattails out of toothpicks and felt and bird houses out of construction paper. She cuts little birds off greeting cards. She cuts up small pieces of plastic artificial fems and leaves to make fronds and branches in the tiny scenes. She also uses many tiny colored seashells, bits of real coral, beads and stars which she buys from hobby catalogs. one prepares in advance an uie me scene will contain. The objects of each scene are pushed into place in soft melted wax poured into the "floor” of the eggshell. The goose eggs also make ideal jewelry boxes. Each one is lined with richly-gathered velvet linings. The outsides are bedecked in colors corresponding to the inside linings, with gold or silver braid, pearls and shell flowers. A tiny hinge holds the top on and one poppit bead forms the handle for opening the top. “Such things as the pearl beads and gold tapes can get to be quite expensive,” Mrs. Killeen said, “but any hobby is going to run into a little money if you let it.”
