Instructions for the Pysanky Egg
Here are the steps to make Pasanky eggs. First off you need a clean white egg. For keep-ability they should be blown out and rinsed well. Let dry overnight. If you wish to use your eggs in a ritual and bury them for ferility, it's fine to leave them raw and whole.
The way to blow out an egg is take a sharp needle and drill a hole in both ends of the egg. One hole should be a bit larger than the other. Puncture the yolk inside the egg with the needle. Wrap your lips around the egg gently on the side with the smaller hole and start blowing. The goo inside the shell is just happy as can be to be in the shell, and has no interest at all on coming out of the shell. You will have to blow steady and strong, maybe several times, to convince it all to start moving where you want it, out the big hole. Once a little bit comes out, the rest follows fairly easily. What ever you do, don't press hard with your lips on the egg. Rinse out the inside in running water. Then take vinegar and a clean cloth and gently wash the outside of the egg. This will remove finger oils and other impurities that will hinder the dye. Dry overnight.
Now assemble your supplies. You will need a kistka, which is a pen of sorts for transfering the wax to the egg. I found some calligraphy nibs and a handle at the stationary store, but have also used toothpicks, the end of a steak knife, tines of a fork. Anything that will neatly dip in wax and draw on the egg. You also need cooled egg dye. There are plenty of sites on the web that will sell you professional quality supplies, but for home purposes I use cooled dye off the back of the box of food colors. Natural dyes are problematic in they work best warm, we need cold dye. You will need as many colors as you wish on your egg made in advance. Black is nearly impossible with food colors. I have tried every color mixed and it just won't go black. Cover your work area with newspapers, but also with some paper towels to prevent newsprint from transfering to your egg, or oils from the print making spots on your eggs the dye won't stick to.
The wax has been traditionally beeswax. For a home craft the little Wallyworld candles in the metal containers work just fine. Light your candle to give it time to get some wax melted.
Now chose a design and with pencil lightly draw lines on the egg to preportion it equally. DO NOT ERASE!!!! If you make a mistake, it will probably be covered in dye, but erasing will cause a spot on your egg that will be a big smudge when dyed.
Start drawing your design lightly in pencil. If you are the artistic type to begin with, or want to go free form, guide lines won't be needed. But if you go for symetrical and balanced, they really help. The pictures above show the areas of the egg that will remain white when the egg has been completely dyed.
Now take your kistka, knife, or whatever and trace your design-ONLY THE PART TO REMAIN WHITE in wax. If you make a mistake with your wax while drawing, there is not much you can do about it other than be creative and work it in. You can not get the wax back off the egg clean enough that dye will ever stick to it.
The design I chose to use as an example starts with orange, but you can use yellow or another light color. The first dye is the lightest color dye is the important thing. Once your white spots are waxed gently drop your egg in the yellow (lightest) dye and wait. Cool dyes take a long time.
OK, now we take our orange in this case egg out of the dye and let it dry. You can pat them gently with paper towels but DO NOT RUB!!!! You will have wax smears everywhere. The first wax stays on, don't remove it yet! Now we are adding the netting in the center of the design. Draw on lightly with pencil, or go it freehand. Trace or draw them with the wax, and drop in the next darker color. This design uses dark red. Drop your egg in the red, and wait.
Here we are waxing the insides of the star shape. Fill large areas completely or they will have spots in them. This goes in the next darkest color. They had black because they are proffesionals. I used dark purple when I first tried this design and let it sit in the dye a loooong time. Once you get the color you desire remove the egg and again let it dry or pat it gently dry.
Now for the magic. Carefully hold your egg above a candle flame. The wax will start to melt and drip off. You can gently wipe here with a paper towel. Turn and melt, turn and melt until all your wax is off. Tongs will help save the fingers from burn ointment!
And here we have the finished design! You have the white, the orange netting, the red spikes and the black(or darkest colored) back ground. When the wax starts melting off, see if you can resist saying ooooooh so coool!
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