Shugo Chara Eggs

I wanted to start doing close-ups and tutorial explanations for my various props that I've gotten compliments on. I'll start by putting up pictures, feel free to ask questions about anything you want to know!

OK, so here were my overarching goals for the project:
-Make eggs that would attach to a belt and hang there.
-as detailed as I could make them without going nuts.
-make them sturdy enough to last through multiple cons.

Things I knew would be problematic:
-2d plaid on 3d eggs?
-I'm not good at painting, especially straight lines.
-getting crisp edges on anything.

Inventory:
Krayola Model Magic
3 safety pins
3 small keychains
red, blue, green, black, white paint
paint brushes (durr)
black electrical tape
scrapbooking punches in the shapes of the symbols for each egg--heart, spade, etc.
red, blue, green paper
colored pencils/crayons/charcoals--red, green, blue, black
modge podge

optional:
red, blue, green glitter

So, here's what I did--

--Making the Egg--
I made the egg out of stuff called Krayola Model Magic, which is an air-drying clay. I made them all at the same time so that they'd all be the same size. I formed them into egg shapes and THEN pressed a safety pin top down until only the circle of metal at the bottom was visible. Then I re-formed the egg shape around it, because that little metal ring was going to be how I attached the eggs to the keychains that would attach to the belt.

Let this dry for at least 24 hours and preferably for several days, just to be sure.

--Painting the Egg--
Paint the eggs the pastel base colors, and make sure you keep enough of those colors around to fix any mistakes you make when painting the plaid!
Let dry for another 24 hours or so. (I like long drying times because I've screwed stuff up all over the place not waiting long enough.)

*hint*
you've painted a spherical object. why not attach the keychain part now and hang it from something to dry? That way it doesn't pool anywhere weird or get stuck to stuff.

--Plaid, my immortal enemy--
Paint them plaid, people. It's not fun, but it looks way more authentic when you do, I promise.
I decided that the best way to get a 360 view of the egg was to make circles instead of lines across the egg. I also knew this was going to be b*tch hard.

I traced them lightly with colored pencils to get the proportions right. How many circles did I want to draw? how many crisscrossing lines said 'laid' to me? How many could I paint without screaming?
Don't think that last one isn't equally important.

After tracing I began painting the lines, and as you can see from the close-up I messed up and wobbled CONSTANTLY. The good news is that not in close-up this is pretty hard to see. Hooray!
The other good news is after the lines dry (and yeah, you gotta do color and WAIT and black and WAIT to avoid smudging.) you can paint over some of the wobbly mistakes with the base pastel colors.

--Black lines and symbols--
This is where it got inventive. Painting is NOT my forte, as you've figured out by now. But what my eyes were telling me was to paint a fat black line around the circumference of each egg and then paint tiny tiny identical symbols on each one.
Hell no, I said. I am smarter than this!
So this is what I did:
I used black electrical tape to make each black line. It's stretchy and adheres itself! If only everything else was as user-friendly. After that, I used what turned out to have been the major investments of my inventory--off of e-bay I purchased scrapbooking punches in the shapes of a heart, a spade, and a clover. Because they make those. So I don't have to!
I punched out a bunch of shapes from the paper I'd used (I used cardstock which is sturdy but didn't adhere too well to the surface.) I then spaced them out without gluing them on to see how many I'd need and how I wanted to space them out, kind of thing.
I then glued them to the surface of the tape with modge podge. This wasn't actually what I did the first time, but which is what I did that didn't make them fly off when they rattled into each other, so do this instead.

--Finishing details--
Okay, you're almost done! Hooray! So what's left? Three things:
Paint the little black details that spout up from the big black line on each egg. It's different for each one, so make sure you find a visual reference for each before painting!
Sealant--you can paint the entire thing with clear glossy modge podge (I like shiny things.), or you can be lazy and shell out for a spray bottle of shiny sealant. That's more $$ but won't have paint lines, which is kinda nice.
and the optional:
I knew there were spots on my eggs that were pretty iffy looking. So I had some glitter in the right colors, and during the sealant phase I blew some glitter on the iffy looking parts. Now they're less visible, because they're shiny! HAHAH!
Hopefully yours will look better and you won't have to do that. But if not, here's a neat trick.

Wait for that to dry, and you're shugo chara eggs are complete! You can naturally modify the idea for eggs other than Amu's as well.

Hopefully you have found my tutorial instructive, and let me know if you like it/use it! Encouragement = more future tutorials. <3