Artist Hopes to Crack the Easter Egg Market
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone, Thomas Edison switched on the first light bulb. And Kristen De Lamar may have perfected the ceramic Easter egg.
These are no ordinary eggs. De Lamar, a Laguna Hills artist, molds them from clay, using a special process she developed to make it easier to put candy inside. They are coconut-sized, pastel-colored and sell for about $15 a crack, which, of course, is how they must be opened.
De Lamar is selling her unique Easter eggs through today at the MainPlace/Santa Ana mall. And sales have been brisk.
Friday morning, De Lamar was busily chatting with customers, ringing up sales and inscribing eggs at her Great Egg-Spectations cart near the center of the plaza. De Lamar said she hopes to gross $10,000 from sales at the mall and a swap meet--double her business last year when she tried out the concept at the Laguna Hills Mall.
She’s been operating her cart at MainPlace for just two weeks, but making the eggs took months. Each of the 500 eggs required about 15 minutes to create, she estimates. Friends and family have helped her decorate the eggs and staff the cart.
“It’s a labor of love,” she insists.
Some customers buy more than one. One Trabuco Hills woman, De Lamar said, bought seven or eight, which she planned to hide in an Easter egg hunt for her grown children because “they’re older and they don’t believe in the Easter Bunny.”
De Lamar, 25, came up with the idea for the ceramic eggs a few years ago while demonstrating how to make pottery in Laguna Beach. Ceramic Easter eggs were already fashionable--simple mounds of clay drawn up like a bowl then closed at the top. But De Lamar’s innovation was figuring out how to get the inside of the egg dry enough so that it could be stuffed with goodies.
The eggs can be dried and hardened without being fired in a kiln. And they are made with a type of clay that is especially durable, she said. “I have three in the back of my truck and they knock all around” without breaking, she said.
They are not durable enough, however, to survive a simple chest-high drop onto concrete. But some customers wince at having to destroy the colorful artwork. An alternative method for opening the eggs is to cut them with a saw blade, exposing the chocolate Easter bunny, malted milk balls and other things inside.
Business has been so good that De Lamar hopes to sell the eggs to retail stores next year. But she doesn’t plan to make a career out of the egg business. It’s fun and provides extra income, she says, but producing so many eggs saps her creative energy.
She plans instead to study nursing. That way, ceramics will always be a hobby instead of a career.