So... finally... a much awaited post.
How to make an Easter egg!
It's not as hard as it looks.
Essentially, you dip your egg into a sequence of dyes, going from lighter to darker, and apply beeswax along the way to keep the part of each color that you want to preserve. You can do the same thing with a clear/white crayon that sometime comes with drugstore easter egg kits-- but not in such a detailed way.
So, you start by applying wax to anything you'd like to keep white on your egg. Then you dye your egg yellow, and apply wax to anything you'd like to keep yellow.
Then dip in orange, and apply wax to anything you'd like to keep orange.
And so on.
At the end, if you've done it right, your egg looks all black and mucky.
It's usually good to be a bit selective about the colors you use on each egg, because if you want to use oranges and reds they can muddy your blues and greens and vice versa. However, sometimes you get interesting results by scrambling things up a bit as well!
To apply the wax, you use a special kind of stylus that you heat up over a candle flame.
Next comes the fun part...
And at the end when you've finished all your colors, you melt all the wax off using a candle flame as well. It's important to hold your egg near the side of the flame, and not over the top of the flame, to avoid getting a black ashy stain on your egg. You melt the wax with the flame, and then wipe the spot with a paper towel, until your egg is all clean and beautiful.
In the past, I've ordered supplies from this place:
http://www.surmastore.com/pysanka.html
I like them very much over the phone-- But haven't yet managed to visit!
