The Amy Carter Replicated Commemorative Egg

On behalf of America's egg farmers, the American Egg Board has presented the First Lady’s Commemorative Egg for more than 40 years. This springtime tradition began at the 1977 Easter Egg Roll with First Daughter Amy Carter receiving the first-ever Commemorative Egg.


In 2019 the American Egg Board was in the process of creating an extensive media outreach program to bring about awareness of this notable presentation. Since many of the original Commemorative Eggs may be housed at respective presidential libraries, or in some cases, have become part of the first lady’s personal collection, most pieces of art were not available to this program. In such cases, the original artist was contacted and asked to replicate their creation. If an artist was not available, other egg artists where contacted and asked if they would consider recreating select eggs for this initiative. I happened to be one of those artists who was not only called on to create a copy of my 2014 Commemorative Egg, but was asked if I would be willing to take on the recreation of the very first Commemorative Egg presented to First Daughter Amy Carter.


Duplicating my 2014 Egg wasn’t a problem since I retained all of my original drawings and color pallet, but the Amy egg was a different story all together due to the poor quality and small size of the reference photo I was given. In the end, I was able to complete this request, but not without difficulty!

Reproducing the Amy Carter Commemorative Egg

 To the left is the original Amy Egg photo at actual size — the only reference available.

The lettering of Amy’s name was my biggest challenge, so before I even accepted this assignment, I tested my hand on a reject egg to see if I could actually paint the outlined lettering with any accuracy. Not perfect, but not bad!


Following the positive result of this test, I contacted the American Egg Board and accepted this commission.


Pictured, is the finished lettering on the actual hollowed out egg. The letters were achieved with the use of a very tiny brush, a good eye, and a very steady hand! An Exacto knife was a handy tool that was used to carefully scrape away any paint blobs that occurred, especially on the delicate and exacting outline. A larger version of this photo was presented to the board for approval and once I received their OK, I proceeded with the artwork surrounding Amy’s name.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t read the details of the butterfly in the original photo and was told to create my best interpretation of what I saw.


The American Egg Board was extremely happy with the replication, and this egg is now in the collection of Commemorative Egg reproductions held by the AEB at their headquarters.

In addition to replicating the Amy Egg, I also duplicated my original 2014 First Lady Commemorative Egg. Enjoy the mix of both original and reproduced First Lady Commemorative Eggs by simply clicking here.