A bit late for Easter...

[ajda]

A rare sub-species of the famous Welsh dragon (y Ddraig Goch) is the Skomer Stormlizard - found only along the Pembrokeshire coast, chiefly on the islands of Skomer, Skokholm and Gateholm. In addition to its normal eggs, this dragon produces small, unfertilised, jewel-like eggs, apparently as toys for its young. The adult dragons appear to confer little value on these (much preferring human made trinkets of gold and silver) - so once the young have flown the nest the eggs are simply abandoned. They are collected by an elite team of highly trained choughs and sold to raise funds for dragon research and conservation work.

[Pauline]

I thoght it was the puffins that collected them to warm their burrows

[helbels]

Beautiful!

[Steampunkglass]

Lovely! Great colours and love the story behind them 

[ajda]

I thoght it was the puffins that collected them to warm their burrows

You're quite right, Pauline - there's a fierce rivalry between the law-abiding choughs and those anarchic puffins...

[garishglobes]

Love them love the story. Imagine the dragon which would hatch if only these had really been fertilised. It'd be spectacular!

[julieHB]

Gorgeous jewel eggs - love the story!! 

[Margram]

Lovely clutch of magical eggs!

[Nicknack]

Beautiful eggs and story!

Nick

[ajda]

And here are a couple of said choughs - who've flown over from the soft glass world to raise an important question:
Can anyone recommend any really opaque boro reds?
I need one that won't go transparent when drawn as thin as a chough's beak.
As you can see, the 104 is OK, though I can't remember which I used here.

[Pat from Canvey]

Beautiful work.

[GaysieMay]

Beautiful, love the story too. X

[garishglobes]

I'm not sure about opaque reds - I thought the opaque ones were all fairly opaque, the potential problem being that they might bubble/burn if they are drawn thin because the heat is more on the thinner part, if you see what I mean. All opaque reds should be worked fairly cool to avoid this. The ones I know about and have definitely used would be Momka's Carmen Red and the Glass Alchemy Crayon reds. It isn't a colour that I use a lot so I may well have Northstar ones in a shorts bag but unmarked. Between Carmen Red and the Crayons, the main difference I've noticed is that Carmen Red does very strange things if you try to twist it with green. (Yes, that was Christmas!!) But both pulled completely opaque to as thin as the top of an earring. I can easily send you a tiny bit, if you'd like to try - just send me a pm. 

[ajda]

Thanks for the info, and the offer to send me a sample - very kind of you. Actually I recently bought half a stick of Carmen Red but haven't tried it yet... looks maybe too dark in the rod, but you never quite know with boro how it will behave or end up, even the so-called WYSIWYGs - point taken about overheating. I'll be cautious. I'll have a go this afternoon along with some GA Eclipse, an apparently "bullet-proof" black - let's see how they work for boro choughs. Doing these very simple and small scale has been fine so far with 104 - I'm hoping the boro might allow me to be a bit more ambitious. We see choughs most days down here, almost always in pairs - the most I've seen in a single eyeful was 24...

[garishglobes]

I really think, for birds, you need GA Raven 

There seems to be quite an ongoing discussion about blacks - good luck with the Eclipse, I hope it works for you  (and I think I have read good things about it, so touch wood...)