She’s a good egg

By Emma Sun
VERY few people can list egg decorating as one of their hobbies, but Wendy Andrews proudly does so.
Her fascination began back in 1991 and she has been decorating goose, emu, ostrich and various other eggs ever since.
“I get the eggs from local farms in Victoria,” Wendy explained.
“The emu eggs and ostrich eggs are already blown but sometimes I have to empty the goose eggs.”
Wendy uses a variety of materials to decorate her eggs, including pearls, rhinestones, paints and anything else that looks good.
Some of her great works include eggs she had made for weddings.
“I have done many eggs for weddings,” she said
“I made a coach and horses for my stepson’s wedding. They put it in a glass display and still have it 10 years later.”
An interesting project Wendy has been doing every year for the past 15 years is making a holiday Barbie collectable egg, which she bases on the doll.
“I have to see the Barbie before I can work out what I can decorate on it and what suits it,” Wendy said.
“The Barbie is a small figurine we hang on the Christmas tree, and the eggs I put on display.”
While entering competitions was a favoured pastime for Wendy, she now prefers to sit on the other side of the fence and judge them.
“I’ve been judging for the last 15 years in local agricultural fetes,” she said.
She also teaches egg decorating classes once a week, which she has been doing for the past 19 years, where people can learn the basics through to the intricacies of egg decorating.
Nothing goes to waste when it comes to her hobby and Wendy said the perfect example was when she sent her husband to pick up some eggs for her.
“My husband picked up 500 eggs in one day,” she said.
“My mother ended up helping me blow them. We donated the yolks to the local nursing home that was having a cake stall, and some of them went to the RSPCA for the wild animals.”
Wendy’s artistic skill has also seen her being commissioned by Lakeside Community Development to make Wally the Wombat keyrings for the Pakenham Show on Saturday 19 March.
“It took me six weeks to make 500 keyrings,” Wendy said.
“The keyrings have a photo of the lake at Lakeside with the fountains going. The picture is set underneath a resin.”
She hopes the keyrings would allow people to recognise that lakeside was a facility for everyone in the community to use.
Wendy said her love for egg decorating and other arts would continue for many years yet.
“I love how there’s no finish to egg decorating, how there’s always something you can make or attempt to make out of an egg,” she said.
For anyone who is curious or keen but is afraid it may be too hard, Wendy has a few words of encouragement.
“It’s not really that hard, it’s much easier than you anticipate,” she said.
“Just practice, practice, practice.”