Evolution from Kansas: Wild About Harry: Breeding Dragons

Out of the blue one day, I had this crazy thought- what if we had eggs at the party? With magical creatures inside???

Now, we could have had any sort of magical creatures for our Hogwarts party. I thought about spiders. Rats. Toads. Unicorns. Magic worms. And dragons.

Yes, dragons. And the choice was up to The Redhead. I'm sure I thought of even more critters than those, but dragons topped her list. Thanks to Oriental Trading, dragons arrived on our doorstep a couple months back. And recently, I decided to start the dragon breeding process. Breeding dragons isn't easy, folks. But it's worth it. It's so very worth it.

My personal supplies for breeding dragons. Balloons. Plush dragons.

That's seriously it for now. The color of the balloons doesn't matter.

Now the fun part was trying to get a dragon into the tiny little opening. Ouch is right.

So, this wasn't an easy process. Not at all. And I went through A LOT of balloons just to get one dozen dragons into their little sacs. I had 38 balloons at one point. I was only able to get six dragons into them without breaking/tearing/bursting the balloons. They were cheap balloons and I hurt a lot of my fingers, two to the point I wasn't sure they'd recover. I seriously worried I'd have to go visit a professional and have to make up some story so they wouldn't know how I really hurt my fingers. Because folks, there was no way I was telling them how I actually hurt myself.

Here's an important tip. If you ever have some crazy notion to stuff things into balloons, do not even consider blowing them up with your mouth. Please. Because that's going to get moisture into the balloons. Balloon pumps are great for this. If you don't have a balloon pump because one time your child wanted a circus/carnival party so you decided to learn how to make balloon doggies...well, go buy one at the Dollar Tree then, or somewhere else. Seriously, don't use your mouth. So, so gross.

Then I found a package of balloons I bought last year, from Michael's, and they're bigger balloons, and much stretchier, and all of the dragons fit nicely inside. Without breaking any fingers.

Once all of the balloons were blown up, they hung out for a couple days, and then I saw the stretchy, wonderful, blue balloons were losing their fabulous egg shapes. So goes being the better balloons. So I finally started the messier part of breeding. And pumped those blue ones back into shape.

You can do the flour method for papier-mache, or you can use the glue mixture. I went with glue. And water. Like I was modpodging.

That's it.

I have been using this handy dandy card table for all of my projects. I made sure the surface was covered, as I anticipated this was going to be a chaotic mess. It was. Indeed.

I was dreading this project because I detest stickiness. HATE IT. But I had to march ahead anyway and cover those eggs with at least three layers of newspaper and the glue mix.

It also helps to have your phone handy so you can text your best friend back and forth. Except when your fingers are so nasty from the glue that you can't touch anything. Not your phone. Not the door handle. Not even the remote to put another movie on.

Not all of the balloons had the perfect egg shape, but I used them anyway.

I kept this one over here, as The Redhead was really hoping she could hatch a green dragon. And while I don't want to indulge her every whim, she will be the birthday girl.

Meanwhile, the cat watched the hummingbirds.

This project indeed took over six hours.

I ran into a little snag while attempting to remove balloons almost a week later. While with a typical pinata project, you can just pull out the balloon once everything has dried, it's not that easy when a dragon is in it. Nope. The eggs make these bizarre noises as the balloon deflates and tightens around the dragon. Amniotic sacs, they are. Good times.

I have been hot glue crazy lately ever since I channeled Garrick Ollivander. So I decided to add scroll work and other designs on these eggs before painting.