easter eggs (two), eggs my niece and her three sons (tie)dyed for Easter, April 2009, photo © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
five color tablets
add vinegar and water
wa-la, egg-citement!
easter eggs series, (tie)dyed eggs by my niece and her sons, doodled eggs by my daughters and me, April 2009, photo © 2009 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
-Related to posts Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat and The Thing About Easter.
Wow! I love the colors of those eggs, especially the designs! 8) Looks like you all had fun!
LikeLike
ybonesy, the eggs came out smashing!Wow, wonderful and brilliant colors. Looks like you had a lot of fun and some good time with your family. That’s irreplaceable.
How’d you do the doodled eggs? And get the tie-dye effect on the others? Did you use Q-Tips. I remember those Easter egg kits that included a crayon so you could draw wax where you didn’t want the dye to take. I guess that’s kind of the loose way the lost wax process works. 8)
LikeLike
Thanks, you two. The cool thing is the doodled eggs are blown out, which means we can keep them indefinitely. We’ve already eaten all our dyed hard-boiled eggs.
To do the doodling, we used a Ukrainian egg kit, which comes with a nifty little writing instrument that looks like a tiny funnel on the end of a stick. You heat the metal funnel in a candle flame for about 20 seconds, then scrape the larger end of the funnel against a bar of beeswax. A little beeswax curl goes into the hot funnel, melts, and comes out the small end, allowing you to write with the instrument.
It is hard to control; amazing that those who do Ukrainian egg art come up with such precise and complex designs. I suppose over time you learn how to gauge the flow of the wax out of the writing instrument, but it’s a pretty crude tool. And it doesn’t write for very long. You have to heat and scrape, heat and scrape.
Anyhow, everywhere that you put the wax on an undyed egg, that will remain white. You then dye the egg yellow, the lightest color. The whole egg, minus what’s protected by the wax, turns yellow. Use the wax to cover any areas you want to remain yellow. Then dip into green. Cover areas you want to remain green, dip into orange, and so on until you dip into the darkest color. In our case, because we were using PAAS kit tablets and not actual dye used for Ukrainian eggs, we went to blue. But with the Ukrainian eggs, the last color is usually black.
Lots of fun. Great detail work if you need a relaxing thing to do, something you can get into. And the way we did it, freeform, it didn’t take as much time as one would expect. Maybe an hour to do a pretty intricate egg.
LikeLike
Oh, on the tie-dyed eggs, I think the process involved pieces of cloth. So you maybe put the dye into the cloth, wrap it around a part of the egg, do it again with a different color, then dunk the partially dyed egg into another dye bath. At least that’s how my niece described it to me.
I thought those came out beautifully.
LikeLike
Wow, just reading about the process is almost complicated to me! LOL 😛 Nevertheless, they turned out beautiful!
LikeLike
I know! We had the kit for about three weeks before I even let the girls blow out the eggs (have you ever done that?) and find a candle and start the wax part. It seemed so intimidating.
But the truth is, thank God for youthful energy. Kids are intimidated by nothing. And so they figured it all out and then taught me how to do it. And it wasn’t that hard once you get your workspace ready, a long candle going (we burned it to the wick) and dyes. And the reason I did the cheapo dies was because it was easier, as we were coloring regular Easter eggs. (The girls even taught me how to blow out the eggs; I had done it as a kid but not since. Use a thumbtack to make the hole. Less painful than using a straight pin.)
Now I won’t hesitate in doing Ukrainian eggs on another occasion, maybe for Christmas.
LikeLike
Oh, speaking of complicated, I forgot an important step! When all the dying is done, the egg is essentially covered in wax. It looks black, in fact. You take the egg and gently put it into the flame, at the side, not above the flame. You let the flame melt the wax and with a tissue gently wipe away the wax. That’s the best part—seeing the creation appear under the wax!
LikeLike
@Yb: Yes, I blew out eggs before, when I was a kid!! 😛 Haven’t done it in years though! I think I still remember how to do it though, but yes, thumbtacks are wonderful tools!
It’s wonderful to read about your experience with egg painting and decorating. Now it makes me want to splash colors all over a canvas! Hmm, and then I can incorporate some lines of poems I’ve written or something. Oooh, the possibilities…
LikeLike
Cool looking eggs! When I painted eggs as a kid they looked just like something painted by a kid. It’s amazing the different forms art can take.
LikeLike