Pysanky!: Decorating Ukranian Easter Eggs

A pysanka (Ukrainian: писанка, plural: pysanky) is a Ukrainian Easter egg, decorated using beeswax in a sort of crayon-resist approach using dyes. This is our first year trying Pysanky and we loved it! Using an inexpensive kit from Michaels, we worked on these a little bit over the past two days and will do a few more before Easter.

Apparently, some people just use raw eggs, but we blew them out (punch both ends with a needle, mix yolk, then drain through one of the holes(we used an old nasal syringe from our baby days to help blow them out). The draw the designs in pencil, cover parts of the design in wax, then dye them in progressively darker dyes, covering the colors we want to preserve in wax in between colors.

Lots of tips at LearnPysanky.com. Also a friend told us that the dyes keep well if they are frozen in ice cube trays and stored in a bag. If you use blown out eggs, you can also insert a wire and use them a Christmas ornaments or an egg tree...

Blessings to you all this Easter!



Wikipedia: Pysanky