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| The fire of Swarovski crystals |
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| Cut eggs, ready to be crystalled |
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CLASSIC AND CLASSY.......ONLY
AT TINKA*
WELCOME VISITOR! I am Katie Geerling,
an artist and creator of beautiful jeweled eggs. Nice to meet you! Please take time to read about my very own
technique, how to turn a blown out egg into a breathtaking jewel piece...
My imagination offers me an abundance of beautiful
images, which I turn into freehand designs. Some of these are drawn with pencil directly on the eggshell, some, thanks to
digital technology, become mastercopies, and can be used multiple times by applying digital decal paper. Starting with cutting,
however, I return to the manual way. I cut each egg individually, making sure even repeat patterns get a one of a kind appearance.
I work on many different kind of eggs, from tiny chicken eggs through duck, goose, jumbo goose to rhea and emu eggs.
To cut through the eggshell I use a special jeweler's
high speed micromotor, interchanging many different cutting burrs in my handpiece. This is how I compose the design, similar
a bit to mosaic work. Practice taught me how to guide my tool to achieve unique results. After having finished the cutting work, eggs go through a cleaning process
in Clorox bleach and vinegar, then washed with soft soap and dried. A final step before crystalling, each egg is sprayed with
two layers of acrylic coating. This gives the shell a beautiful shine and strengthens the egg as well. The cut design "sets the stage" for the crystalling process. I use
exclusively Swarovski Austrian crystals, be that jewelling the egg or adding beadwork to it.
Holes and cuts are set with pointed back crystals
in many different sizes and colors, while flat back stones are more instrumental in contouring or filling in spaces between
cuts. Each stone is placed individually, I use a self designed pick up stick with beeswax at the end. Next with a plain stick
I adjust the stones. That's when one realizes that how important is the proper position to achieve maximum reflection. Beeswax
is a jeweler secret, picks up stones easily and releases promptly as the crystal touches the glue. Hardly any smudge and easy
to wipe off. Many of my customers fell in love with the wonderful help of this simple tool. I use a professional jewelers
cement to assure clear glueing and strong hold. When I work on a new design, but even with repeat designs I seldom know ahead
the color-theme. It evolves on me as I crystal along. Almost like one color is calling out to the next one.....talk about
living in a rainbow world! Crystal beads and drop crystals complete the design until the egg becomes a brilliant work of art.
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Inspiration is catchy, to meet other talented people's
creative dreams, I expanded my eggart business, and also sell supplies which cater to my type of egg decorating technique.
You will find in my inventory everything to complete a TINKA egg. If your main focus is on crystals, I have beautiful kits
available, where the job is to finish the already cut in design with pre-counted and pre-packaged crystals. For the "I
just want to enjoy" customer there are finished eggs for sale. To share the passion of this beautiful art work I am also
giving crystalling classes where we work on precut eggs. I just expanded my teaching schedule to offer cutting classes as
well. There is much more about this on the following pages. Click on the e-mail link at the bottom of each page to send me
a message. Visit me on Facebook. I regularly attend beautiful egg art shows accross the United States. The perfect setting
to exachange ideas in person! Thank you for visiting the world of TINKA*EGG ART!
For information about egg-art shows, events, news and beautiful photos
of different eggartists click on the link below to visit the website of the International Egg Art Guild.
Click here for the IEAG website
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