Upcycled Juice Box Dragon Eggs

Greetings, noble masters of craft!

Upon this fateful day, we shalt conjure the very eggs of dragons - from naught but a lowly vessel of juice and other peasant items!

"What is this sorcery?" you might ask. But fear not, anyone can perform this magic!

So let us commence without delay!

You will need a juice box with a silver lining on the inside. If you look closely, you can sometimes tell by looking at the outside of the box whether it has foil in the material or not, but the best way to find out is to cut it open.

other supplies:

1. aluminium foil
2. scissors
3. hot glue gun

optional:

1. ruler
2. tape
3. permanent markers / alcohol-based markers
4. brown paper

We're starting off with aluminium foil, because it's quick and easy to shape it into something that resembles an egg. It doesn't have to be aluminium foil, you just need something that's shaped like an egg.

It helps to use a flat object to perfect the shape as much as possible. I kept adding more foil until I was happy with the shape.

You could make a really big dragon egg if you wanted to, but I went for a smaller size.

Now our juice box comes into play. Rinse it, cut it open and cut it into flat panels.

To make the material a bit thinner, I like to peel off the printed side.

We're going to create a fold, so I'm using a ruler to help me. This fold will form the center of our scales, so I'm leaving roughly a centimeter on each side of the fold. But it really depends on how big you want the scales to be.

Now you need some scissors (I like using nail scissors) and you just cut a curve along the fold to create a leaf-shaped scale.

We'll need a lot of scales - one of my eggs had 106.

Silver scales are nice, but if you want to create colourful scales, get some masking tape out and tape it down with the sticky side up.

That way you can stick down the scales and paint them with alcohol-based markers or inks.

Water-based inks unfortunately don't stick to the material.

I like how the colours come out. I will be honest though, the scales will stain you if you touch them a lot, but since they're just for decoration, I didn't bother sealing every single scale.

I wouldn't know how to seal them anyways, since I would normally use PVA glue or nail polish - PVA glue doesn't stick to the scales very well and nail polish messes with the marker's ink.

Now you'll need a glue gun to attach the scales.

For the bottom of the egg, I made a round piece to start off with. Then I covered that circle with scales.

And then you just continue adding scales. I like to place every scale between two other scales.

If you make a mistake, you can often cleanly remove the scale and the glue.

As I got closer to the top, I used slightly smaller scales.

To finish off the egg, I placed another smaller circle at the top. Then I made the last scales meet in the center.

Lastly, to make a nest for the eggs, I went through my trash like a raccoon and found some brown packaging.

I then cut out lots of thin strips and crumpled them up.

I could probably just buy something like that, but I enjoy making things from scratch - even if it requires a little patience sometimes.

Now you can display the eggs in this nest-like material.

I hope you liked this upcycling idea!

May you be successful in your crafting adventures. Farewell!