Egg-squisite

This year I had a dream of making an Easter tree, and so in the weeks prior to Easter I blew a few eggs to hang on my tree. In the end it became more of an Easter branch stuck into a watering can, but I am okay with that. I like to give my traditions room to improve year to year.


The best part of making my Easter branch was dying the eggs. My friend Jill bought a kit for Polish (Ukrainian, etc.) eggs, which are designed using wax and potent dyes, and I spent a night immersed in this new art form. In order to put the design onto the egg, we used small tools with tiny cups of wax at the end, and we held the wax over the flame to liquefy it and then gently touch the tool to the egg to draw on our design. Essentially, the eggs are dyed multiple times in the lightest colors to the darkest, and between each layer more wax is added, which seals in the color of whatever area it touches. (Got that?)


The pink flowered egg at the top was my first try. I was still experimenting with the design style and the process, so it came out fairly monochromatic. By the time I got to the egg below, I was branching into using three colors. But my friend Danille really took the cake. Her egg is the beautiful one above, and I could not believe my eyes when I saw how it had turned out! Applying the design and dying the eggs multiple times requires some careful planning, and she truly aced it.