Crack Craftswoman Turns Eggs Into Art

You name the handicraft and Verna Senger has made it.

That includes needlepoint, embroidery, quilling, wire flowers, holiday ornaments and pressed flower stationary.

But about 17 years ago, Senger, 64, discovered egg artistry and vows she’ll do it “as long as I live. . . .”

“I saw them done at a show and liked that kind of thing,” said the Capistrano Beach grandmother of 13 who spends just about every waking minute creating fancy egg decorations.

So ingenious and elegant is her work that one of her empty ostrich eggs depicts an Italian street scene that includes a working water fountain.

Another of her “fancies,” as she calls them, features a carousel with horses that circle around in an ostrich egg. Even with all her talent, she attends an egg-decorating class once a week.

“There’s always something to learn,” she said.

Besides empty ostrich eggs, she uses goose, duck, chicken, turkey, quail, pheasant, rhea and black and green emu eggs, some of them costing more than $20.

She orders the ostrich eggs from a company on the East Coast and pays $10 and more apiece. She says egg decorating is “hotter” in the East.

“It gets costly if you break them,” said Senger, who just completed a two-year term as vice president of the Southern California Eggs Artists Assn. and earlier served two terms as president. “I’ve broken a few but only because I’ve dropped them.”

The association meets monthly in the Placentia Library.

Easter Sunday isn’t necessarily a special time for eggers, according to Senger, but she has a three-month exhibit of her work at the San Clemente Community Center through May.

Egg decorating can be an expensive hobby, she said, pointing out she recently bought an air drill, similar to the type dentists use, that cost $500.

“I sell a few eggs here and there, but I like to keep them, especially the big ones,” she said. Her collection numbers about 220.

“Here and there” means the various egg shows and exhibitions she attends throughout the country, including two egg extravaganzas in June in Dallas and Washington.

The mother of four said she has always made crafts but gave most of them up in favor of egg shells.

“I’ve gotten to be pretty good at it, and it’s a good pastime,” she said, “especially at Christmas. I love to make egg ornaments for Christmas trees. It gives me a lot of enjoyment.”

It’s also the time she doesn’t mind selling her creations.

“I make a lot of them, and they are wonderful decorations, especially the ones with beads on the front that glow from the lights on the tree.”

At times she glues rhinestones on the yule ornaments, “but that’s really expensive to do.”

Although egg decorating consumes most of her time, she enjoys bowling in a league and continues to serve as chairwoman of the San Clemente Arts and Crafts Club.

“I’ve been chairwoman of the club since 1979,” she said. “Nobody else wants the job.”