In middle school the art teacher taught us a Ukrainian egg decorating tradition,
pysanky. (Somehow my mom still has the ostrich egg from that experience. Hey Mom, you should send me a picture of that egg so I can post it.) Some Easter or two after that I remember applying the concept of the craft without the tools. I simply dripped hot wax from a burning candle onto an egg and dyed it, let it dry and repeated until there were several colors on the egg. After melting the wax shell off it looked pretty neat, but that probably had something to do with the fact that I did it. For numerous years I have been meaning to find the right tools and take the time to make some Ukrainian Easter eggs. Finally this year it happened. Kim happened upon a children's book about the tradition at her library and checked it out for me. I did a little research and thanks to Amazon.com I acquired a pysanky kit complete with black bees wax, design ideas/directions, dye, and three kistkas. A kistka is the specially designed wax "pen" that applies the hot wax on the egg. So, boring details of the process aside, we had fun. Though we haven't demonstrated having the skills to produce a traditional looking Ukrainian pysanky egg, we have produced some unique looking Easter eggs. There would have been eight, but two broke. After all the time and work, and excitement of bringing the egg to show-and-tell at preschool, Cedar was simply devastated - hopeless wailing and huge tears - when she accidentally dropped her egg in the elation of showing it to mom when she heard Kim walk in the front door. It was late and past bedtime, but we started working on another egg right away!
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| beginning the process |
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| the first coat |
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| middle of the process with a few different colors |
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| final product - the wax melted and wiped off to reveal all the colors used |
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