Toucan Easter Egg

This is my final decorated Easter egg for this year. It's a toucan. Specifically, it's a toco toucan, the largest species of toucan. Endemic to South America, toco toucans live in semi-open habitats at altitudes up to 5740 feet (in contrast to other toucans, who prefer closed-canopy forests). They feed mainly on fruit. They are a least-concern species, still plentiful in the wild. And they're really fun use as inspiration for a decorated egg. Affiliate links below. 

Toucan Easter Egg

Materials:

• white egg (raw, hardboiled, or empty)
• acrylic paint (black, green)
• cardboard tube
• scissors
• white cardstock
• ink pads (yellow, orange)
• blending brushes
• Sharpie (black)
• googly eye
• felt (green)
• craft glue

Steps: 

Paint the egg black, leaving a rounded cone-shaped area white. 

Cut a ring from the cardboard tube. Paint it green. 

Cut a beak from cardstock. Use the blending brushes to add orange ink to the bottom of the beak and yellow ink to the top. Without adding extra ink to the brush, color the white area of the egg, just where the eye will go. Use a Sharpie to color the end of the beak black. 

Cut leaves from green felt and glue them to the cardboard tube ring. Glue the googly eye and beak in place. When the glue is dry, place the toucan amongst the leaves. 

The O'Reilly Animals Coloring Book

 Steve bought me a coloring book for Christmas and I loooove it. 

The O'Reilly Animals Coloring Book features twelve beautiful, highly-detailed animal images, each adapted from engravings that, in turn, were inspired by illustrations in natural history books from the 18th and 19th centuries. Affiliate link here and below. 

If you don't know the story of the O'Reilly animals, it's well-worth a read. I hadn't heard of them until I married my computer-scientist husband, who has a substantial collection of O'Reilly books. The covers are so distinctive and completely unlike any of his other professional materials. 

As I mentioned, the O'Reilly coloring book has only 12 pages, which is unusually few for a coloring book. I like every single design, which is pretty much NEVER the case. I am super picky about coloring books. Not only is the paper in this book high-quality, but they're printed single-sided, so you don't have to choose between designs. The images are realistic and detailed, but not overly so. 

I colored the first page, Toucans, using the 320-set Honolulu series alcohol markers by Ohuhu. 

The folks at Ohuhu sent me this complete set to try out and I'm happy to report that they color like a dream! The range of colors is incredible and the ink flow is just right. I used both the brush and chisel ends for coloring and love the options for both precision and coverage.

I will share a complete review of the Ohuhu 320-marker Honolulu markers on Monday, so be looking for that. In the meantime, buy yourself a new coloring book. You deserve it.