egg with squares and lines

This is a smallish duck egg with yellow/orange squares and dotted turquoise lines interwoven between the squares. After I waxed over the squares and lines, I soaked the egg in vinegar for 20+ minutes. Vinegar reacts with the calcium carbonate in the eggshell and slowly dissolves the uncovered parts of the shell. Vinegar etching can be used to create a shadowing effect around the design, unless you accidentally walk away and leave the egg soaking for too long... After etching the egg with vinegar, I scrubbed the egg ever so gently with a baby toothbrush to help remove the dissolved bits of eggshell. I recently switched to a baby toothbrush because my old scrub brush was a little too effective and removed some of the wax on previous eggs. After the scrubbing, the background was a bright white. I decided to dye the egg darker to better camouflage some of my wobbly wax lines (as small mistakes seem to really pop out on a white background). I then dyed the background black, which came out as gray. It's not always possible to get a deep rich color after vinegar etching, particularly with duck eggs. For some reason, this egg made me think of peacock feathers. I'd like to try making a feather design in a future pysanky egg.

another goose egg

This weekend I spent a long time working on a large goose egg pysanky that turned out to have an inch-long crack right through the hole at the end. I didn't even notice the crack until the egg was halfway finished, and blue dye began collecting in the crack edges. Goose eggs have very strong and thick shells compared to regular chicken eggs, and they seem to take dye more reliably than duck eggs. Hopefully the crack will not spread further through the shell after it is varnished. This design was abstract in nature and used 7 colors (turquoise, blueberry, navy, violet, apricot gold, lime, orange). I got to practice making my wax lines smooth, straight, and evenly spaced, a skill that I'm finding to be a challenge. The first photo shows the egg during the wax application; the second set of photos show the egg after the wax was removed. I still need to apply some polyurethane varnish to bring out the colors and make the surface smooth and shiny.

green leaf pysanky egg

I haven't had much time to work on pysanky eggs recently, in part because my mom was here visiting us until yesterday and also because I got obsessed with reading The Golden Compass. The last egg I posted on thing-a-day in February had a green abstract leaf design. This is the finished egg after several further iterations of dying and waxing. Unfortunately I dropped the egg while I was cleaning off the wax. It survived the fall mostly intact, but there is now a small web of cracks slightly visible on one side of the egg. I will eventually varnish it and use it as an ornament on our egg tree.