For Ana Delia, it’s clear that her gift for making crafts came from God: “I received the blessing of the Heavenly Father.” She says He revealed it to her in a dream, and she never doubted it—despite the fact that there was no such tradition in her family. Still, she remembers always loving to make things with her hands, and being quite good at it. But it took a very long time, and many journeys across Colombia, before her true vocation was revealed. In fact, she isn’t even from Quindío, but from La Paila, Valle. Yet it was Armenia that gave her everything she needed to become the master artisan she is today. That’s why she declares herself Quindiana at heart, an adopted daughter of this warm land.

Ana Delia does something unique in Colombian crafts: she works with eggshell. She creates striking containers that seem impossible to imagine made from such a fragile material. Reaching the level of perfection that has earned her recognition as one of the best artisans in the department has been a slow process of time and patience—years of sitting at her worktable, discovering the qualities of the material, exploring how it behaves, clumps together, holds, dries, and paints.

But let’s go back to the beginning, because she never imagined she would one day be creating these works of art. She grew up with little room to dream: as the eldest of nine siblings, she had to act as a second mother to all of them. There was simply no time for playing or imagining new worlds with her hands. She lived in La Paila until she was 23, and only then could she think of doing something for herself, after years of raising her brothers and sisters. At that age, she packed her things and left for Bogotá. It wasn’t really where she wanted to go—she had hoped for somewhere closer, like Pereira or Armenia—but opportunities arose in the capital. As she likes to say: “You think one thing, but destiny has something even better in store.” In Bogotá, she spent a decade moving from house to house, doing all kinds of work. Later, when love came into the picture, she followed her partner to Guaviare and Boyacá, wandering for another eight years before finally returning to her hometown in Valle. In every place, she combined her day jobs with handcrafts: some pottery, a bit of knitting.

But it wasn’t until she resettled in the mountains, more mature, that she discovered her true passion. That was twenty years ago—“these gray hairs aren’t fake,” she laughs, proud of her sixty well-lived years. She didn’t start with eggshell, though, but with recycling. She took every course she could find, fascinated by the idea of reusing discarded materials—metals, plastics, glass—transforming them into something new. She delighted in making lanterns from soda bottles, mosaics, handbags from old jeans, boxes and trinkets from cardboard. Then came the moment that shifted everything. At a small neighborhood fair where she was proudly showing her recycled creations, she overheard a woman tell a friend: “They’re just dressing up garbage.” The words hurt and offended her. But they also lit a fire. Right then, she promised herself she would create something so beautiful that no one would ever doubt it. That’s when she discovered eggshells.

Through her own experiments and workshops with Artesanías de Colombia, Ana Delia has helped shape a new craft technique in real time. Her trials and errors are documenting an emerging field in Colombian artisanry. Watching her work is hypnotic: her concentration, the way her eyes and hands follow every detail. (She has even lost her fingerprints to the heat of sanding.) She layers three or four coats of finely ground eggshell powder onto a balloon that eventually bursts, leaving behind the shape of the container she envisioned. Each step demands patience: if touched too soon, the piece collapses and she must start over. Filling gaps requires hands as gentle as cotton. She laughs at our amazement at how much labor goes into each object, and then reveals that she revisits every piece a dozen times before it’s finished.Whether it was divine intervention or her own persistence—or both—the result is undeniable. Such devotion deserves every round of applause she has received, in Colombia and abroad. Ana Delia transformed her obsession with recycling into a true source of beauty.