The frontier. (O'Neill City, Holt County, Neb.) 1880-1965, October 18, 1962, Farm and Home section, Image 16

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    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.”