Pysanky Easter Eggs @Craftzine.com blog

Pysanky Easter Eggs

Take a look at these beautiful Pysanky Easter Eggs made by Connie Ayers, mom of CRAFT & MAKE's Sheena Stevens. Pysanky are Ukranian Easter eggs where the designs are written with beeswax. See more photos of Connie's beautiful Pysanky eggs in our Facebook photo album.

Pysankyeggs Craft Sheena2

(Photos By: Eva Stevens)

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Posted by: majeral on April 2, 2010 at 6:40 AM

I learned how to do these years ago. I was so proud of my egg. I put it up on a little stand on a shelf. A few months later I noticed a strange smell and keep looking around, my DH found the egg all cracked and "oszzing' OUT. It was to close to a heater and the raw egg burst through I guess. what amess. lol

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Posted by: suzy on April 3, 2010 at 9:40 AM

Beautiful! I've been in love with this art form for many years. Two words of caution: beware of heat and dogs.

One of my first really successful attempts at pysanky was a gorgeous sunflower design. In the Ukrainian tradition, I did not blow it out, because the liquid eventually evaporates through the porous egg shell. It sat in an egg cup on a little shelf next to my bed. Until one hot and humid summer day several years later when it exploded! I now blow out all of my eggs.

However, no matter how clean you think you have gotten an egg (and I use a syringe to fill the empty shell with soapy water, until it runs out clean) an egg is still an egg and will probably always smell like an egg -- to a food obsessed corgi, anyway. My dog not only consumed every egg I made (they were hanging on the Christmas tree) but also consumed some that I had purchased 30 years earlier at the Milwaukee Folk Fair! Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Here are some of the tools I have found useful: a large dollmakers' needle to "scramble" the yolk in the shell before blowing it out. (Less likely to break the area around the hole than an intact yolk.) A "one-hole egg blower" available from the Ukrainian Gift Shop in St. Paul, MN. A syringe used by dentists for cleaning the wounds when you have your wisdom teeth removed. (It has an extra long "nozzle" good for squirting soapy water into the egg after it is blown.) An embossing heat gun for removing the wax from the egg when you are all finished with the batik process.

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