Egg-Citing Activities for Kids, Part 2: Ukrainian Eggs for Easter

You don't have to be Ukrainian to make Ukrainian eggs, called pysanky. Every year since I was growing up, I have made Ukrainian eggs at Easter, getting my first lessons at a Ukrainian gift shop in Northeast Minneapolis. Until a year ago I always used the traditional wooden stylus to make my eggs, heating the metal funnel tip in a candle flame, then inserting it into a lump of beeswax to capture the wax and melt it before drawing on the surface of the egg. Last year I was given an electric tool, which greatly simplifies the process of melting the wax. When my family was visiting, my daughter and grandchildren had a chance to try my new tool. Here are the eggs they made! (Click HERE to see my post from April 2014 to see some of my other eggs from previous years.)

Happy Easter!

MAKING OUR OWN UKRAINIAN EASTER EGGS

HAPPY EASTER!  I got out my collection of homemade Ukrainian Easter Eggs and my egg decorating equipment for the first time in a number of years.  Some of the eggs date back to when my children were young.  I became fascinated with the beautiful designs on Ukrainian eggs when I was growing up in northeast Minneapolis and started to make them myself when I was a teenager. The designs are drawn in wax with a stylus and the colors are added successively.   The eggs can be kept year after year because the inside moisture simply evaporates over time.  (The designs are made on raw eggs.  The eggs are not meant to be eaten but used for decoration.) Some of the eggs in the basket were made by my children when they were much younger, others by me.  Now we have some new eggs--made by me, my son (now grown up!) and my granddaughter, age eight.  This year we used purple dye as our third color.