How to make Ukranian Easter Eggs: Step-by-Step Pysanky

It's almost Easter again, so I thought I would show a step-by-step of how I made this year's Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs).  For the basics of Pysanky and tips I've picked up while learning, click here.  This year I am re-using dye from last year, by simply adding a little less than a tablespoon of white vinegar to the dye to refresh it (do NOT add vinegar to yellow, gold, or orange dyes, they do not need it and will be ruined). 



First, I drew my rough ideas for the egg on a piece of paper.  It took awhile to plan what all I wanted to have on the egg and the order of how to do the colors.  Remember that with Pysanky, you always draw the lightest colors on first, then get darker, so it takes a bit of planning to make a design.  You can get around this a bit by spot coloring areas with q-tips, but this only works for small areas.  The image on the right shows two quarters of the design.  The green grass runs around the entire design, and the bottom is a sunflower made by connecting the points of every blade of grass to a circle at the bottom of the egg.  The top is a sun (shown completely on the right).

To draw on the egg, I start with drawing vertical lines to divide the egg in four (it's easiest to hold the pencil in one place, and rotate the egg underneath).  Then I continue dividing the egg into 8ths and then 16ths.  Finally I draw horizontal lines to show where I am going to put in specific parts of the design.  In this case, these lines will show me where to put the diamonds that will make the grass in this design.  Remember, you can always erase lines after you dye the egg, but do not erase lines on the egg before you dye or the dye will not stay well.

After drawing in the grass diamonds, I drew a circle around the top of the egg to be the sun.  This was followed with points coming off in four directions, then adding four more points between these.

To make the sun more geometric, I then connected the points along the main edges, connecting each point with the point three away from it (See design schematic).

I then drew the sunflower for the bottom of the egg.  I connected all the points of the grass diamonds at the bottom of the egg, then drew a small circle to make the center of the sunflower.








Next I drew in the flowers.  I gave each flower pattern one quarter of the egg.  I alternated roses (single) and the smaller crocuses (two per section).

Here you can see I started to wax in the designs.  I decided to outline the grass, sunflower, sun, and crocuses in white, which means they all get outlined before I dye the egg.

  I then spot colored the crocuses with purple by dipping a q-tip in dye and then dabbing the crocuses (having already outlined them in wax helps keep the dye from spilling over).  After the dye has been on the egg for a few minutes, I dab the excess dye off with a clean q-tip, then wait for it to dry completely.  Once dry, I cover the dyed section with wax so that it will not get colored when I dye the whole egg.

My first dye color was gold (a strong yellow, essentially).  I dyed the egg for a few minutes, rotating it periodically to make sure every part got equal coverage.  Now that the egg had been dyed yellow, I waxed over the sun (except for the sections I would dye red), waxed over the sunflower petals, and outlined the roses.

I next spot dyed the rest of the sun and the roses, using the same technique as the crocuses.  It was a little tricky to color the roses this way because they are so large, but it still worked (just took a little longer).  I then waxed over these sections, and dyed the egg light green.

Now dyed green, I waxed the stems of the crocuses, and waxed in every-other blade of grass.  The rest of the grass I spot-dyed dark green, then waxed over them as well.

 Finally I dyed the entire egg light blue, but the color wasn't strong enough to cover over the light green, so I also very briefly dyed the egg in regular blue.









Once the egg was finished, I melted the wax with a candle (careful to keep the egg far enough from the flame so the soot coming off the candle doesn't get on the egg, it's hard to get back off!), then rubbed it off with a paper towel.  You can only melt a bit at a time, so it takes awhile.  Once all the wax was off, I erased the pencil lines that were still visible.  Then I coated the egg in polyurethane.  I let it dry on a stand of four small nails, and after 24 hours hollowed out the egg (see my first article on Pysanky for more details on this).  After my first one of these eggs, I made a few more that were slight variations on the original design (such as the one shown in the very first picture in this post).

How to make Pysanky (Ukranian Easter Eggs)

This Easter I tried out Ukranian Easter egg making. The eggs are called Pysanky, and it is a fun batique-esque style of making fancy Easter eggs. The general idea is that you draw wax (beeswax) onto an egg, then dye the egg, and whatever you covered in wax will stay white, and the rest will turn the dye color. Then you add more wax, and dye again, so anything you waxed after the first dyeing will stay THAT color, etc. Then you melt the wax off and reveal your cool design. Here are some basic tips I've figured out through trial and error and various people telling me:

Eggs: need to be room temp. This takes a number of hours from a fridge, but once they are out you can actually just leave them sitting out for days and days and days (and weeks, and possibly months). You also don't necessarily need to empty the eggs, though you can (I empty mine AFTER I varnish them).

Designing: you can write in pencil on the eggs, but be sure NOT TO ERASE. it will be bad. You can erase (gently!) any lines that are left AFTER the egg is finished (before varnishing) with a normal eraser, but most lines are picked up by the wax and disappear.

Waxing: To get wax into a kistka, heat the kistka over the candle, then scoop up the fancy wax. always do this facing AWAY from you, as periodically you will get balls of melted wax flying out into space. Heat the kistka over the flame; the soot from the flame will darken the wax so you can see it on the egg! Always draw a line on a piece of newspaper before touching the kistka to the egg or you risk spilling lots of wax on the egg all at once (disaster! since any wax that ever touches the egg forever makes that part of the egg the color it presently is). Lines work best if you make them quickly and all at once; ideally look at where you want the kistka to go while drawing the line to make it straight as possible.
Remember you'll be drawing backwards: first you wax a white egg so anything you wax at first will be white in the end, then you dye it (color) and after that anything you wax will be THAT color, etc. Start with light colors then work your way darker.

Dyeing: Wait until the dye cools to dip the eggs! I recommend using a spoon to set the eggs down into the dye when you are dyeing the eggs so you don't drop and crack them. Dye for 1-3 minutes; the longer you go the darker it gets. Try to hold the dye in a container where it will be deep enough to cover the whole egg but not so deep that you risk dropping the egg and cracking it. To get eggs out of dye i recommend picking them up in the spoon, then picking them out of the spoon in a paper towel. Blot dry, do NOT rub dry! this can smear color and wax and lead to awful things in the future.


Removing Wax: place the egg next to a candle flame, and let the wax melt a bit, then rub off with a paper towel. Don't cook the egg! also don't put the egg over or in the fire because the black soot will get all over it.

Varnishing: i coat my eggs in polyurethane. I actually just dip one finger in the polyurethane and rub it onto the egg. You can also use some sort of gloves, but i forget what kind. Don't use a paper towel or anything like that because they will fall apart into the varnish and be gross.
To dry the eggs once varnished, you can make a tiny stand with four (or three) small nails or pins sticking up through a piece of cardboard (set the egg on the nails, not the cardboard). after a bit, rotate the egg so that the nails don't leave points in the varnish when it hardens.

Other Notes: you can 'spot' paint an area by dipping a q-tip in dye and dabbing it onto a spot and letting it sit for a bit. This way you can do more colors without dyeing the whole egg and making everything darker. Remember to put a layer of wax over the places you spot paint before dyeing the egg the next color!


I got all my supplies from http://www.ukrainiangiftshop.com/
If you are in the neighborhood, the owner Luba is ALWAYS willing to give a demo or tips on how to make the eggs.  You can buy a DVD by her here

Here are some photos of the process and final products of Pysanka (the singular of Pysanky) making:
This is an undyed egg after the first wax layer. Notice that the beeswax, which started clear, turned black when held over the candle.

After the last dyeing, you remove the wax. Put the egg near the flame, let the wax melt, then rub it away with a paper towel. If you empty the egg before you dye it, this goes super fast because the entire egg can heat super quickly when it's just the hollow shell. A non-empty egg will take a bit longer to take the wax off.

Here you can see some wax on, some wax off.






Here are two books of instructions and designs


Or, if you want to skip right to the finish, you can buy sleeves to put eggs into that have designs printed on them already