Egg Decorator’s Designs Brighten Easter Season
In years past, Easter was special around Pauline McChesney’s Fullerton home. She would gather her five children and help dye and decorate eggs for the traditional Easter hunt.
Well, the children have grown and departed, and unless some grandchildren happen by on Easter Sunday, the eggs this year will have a different look.
For instance, one of the eggs shows a young girl inside it taking a bath--in a bathtub.
“That’s one of my favorite ones,” said McChesney, 65, of Fullerton, who saves all the intricately decorated chicken, goose, finch, ostrich, duck and rhea eggs she makes as a hobby.
She is an official “egger,” a member of the Placentia-based Southern California Egg Artists Assn. and the National Egg Art Guild.
There are an estimated 300 eggers in the Southern California club.
“What I make, I keep,” McChesney said, “except I give some of them to family members. I’ve only sold two of them.”
She became serious about egg decorating 12 years ago.
Besides the bathtub scene, the elaborately decorated eggs contain music boxes, a working water fountain, a Southern plantation scene with husband, wife and dog and three eggs pieced together that open on hinges. There is also an ostrich egg made into a working lamp and eggs with velvet, lace and rhinestones.
McChesney will demonstrate “Creating Easter Eggs for Fun” on Wednesday at the North Orange County YWCA and will exhibit some of the 75 eggs in her collection.
Although many women work, when it comes to a special holiday, “mothers are mothers, kids are kids and Easter is Easter,” said McChesney, who will provide colored eggs, ribbon and silk flowers to show novice eggers how to decorate eggs and to alert them of the Egg Artists Assn.
“I don’t think our egg club is that well known,” she said. “But we enjoy doing this type of handcraft. We’re trying to get away from the idea people have that the only thing we do is decorate eggs for Easter. Some of the eggs take four months to finish.”
She says that all the eggs, most bought locally from farms, are emptied before being decorated. She sometimes uses large ostrich and rhea eggs that can cost $40 each. Other costs include a saw to cut the egg and a miniature bathtub to set a certain scene.
How good is she? “I’m just average,” she said with a smile.
Clearly, Ida Jenks comes from hardy stock.
She just celebrated her 100th birthday at Beverly Manor Convalescent Hospital in Anaheim. No doubt the same is true of her five brothers and sisters, who sent congratulations from their homes throughout the country.
They are William, 95; Mary, 93; Emma, 91; Anna, 90, and Julia, 88.
Gosh!
Helen Arndt wore orchids and baby’s breath in her hair and Howard Cottingham looked smashing in his off-white suit as the two were married before 50 friends and relatives in Laguna Hills Palm Terrace.
She’s 85 and he’s 91.
Why did they do it? “Because we are in love,” the two chimed at the wedding.
A guest added: “The body may age, but the heart never wrinkles.”
Most high school softball teams are overmatched when they face pitcher Ruby Flores, 16, of Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton.
Last week, she pitched two no-hitters, winning 6-0 and 1-0.
The good news for the losers? Two batters reached base on an error and walk in the 6-0 game.
The bad news? The other was a perfect game.
The really bad news? She’s only a junior.
Acknowledgments--One-time U.S. Navy hospital corpsman Georgette Price of Placentia was named commander of Chapter 94 of the Disabled American Veterans of North Orange County, the first woman to head the group.