Hello from Sunday night

Happy first day of spring to everyone on my half of the old globe.

Today I got the most amazing chance to try to paint some Ukrainian Easter eggs with my friend Jane.
I’ve never tried this method…even though I’m Czech and technically so close that it’s almost silly, but there you are. You all probably already know I paint Easter eggs but totally differently, (look here), so I was really interested to find out about the Pysanky method.

Look at all these beautiful and intricate eggs. Jane made most of these and she displays them in a large glass bowl. They look so beautiful all together.

The idea for this is to use a wax applicator called a kistka and some coloured bee’s wax (so you can see your line) and work in a batik fashion drawing with the wax and dipping the egg into layers of dye baths.

As you can see from this…my first egg…I’m absolutely hopeless at straight lines. 😀

So we worked our way around two eggs, working on one while the second was dye bathing, and it’s amazing how there is a chemical formula of sorts to these dyes. For example, if I was to paint something red, and then put blue paint on it, I’d get purple. But not with these dyes. The green can dye the egg a true green over red! Amazing.

After the final colour for my eggs, which was black, the eggs were pretty caked with wax and looking rather unglamorous.

But then Jane put them on scrunched up aluminum foil nests and into a warm toaster oven, and in a few minutes the wax began to melt off.
Then I wiped off the melted wax with a paper towel.
Look at how the eggs turned out. I’m thrilled with them.
Now all that’s left is to gently punch holes on either end and blow the contents out. Then I can lacquer them and add them to our Easter branch.

Thank you so much Jane. This was tons of fun. 😀