Thing-a-day.com

We got another layer of powdery snow today, which seems a fitting end to this much-too-snowy month. I’m really looking forward to seeing some green outside soon. Tonight I started on a green pysanky egg with a leaf design to help me think of spring and warm weather. Maybe it’s a good sign that I’m posting an unfinished thing with my last post. I plan to keep working on the egg tomorrow, and perhaps that will help me continue this pattern of doing stuff. I’ve really enjoyed this past month, especially seeing all the cool things that other people did. Thanks everyone!

We had guests over tonight, so afterwards I was in a rush to finish my pysanky duck egg. The first colors (yellow, apricot, orange, red) went well, although the egg seemed to be having a seepage problem. Tiny droplets of water started bubbling out of the egg at random spots on the shell because I hadn’t sealed the egg hole tightly enough with wax. I tried to deal with this problem by putting the egg in the freezer before dying it. Then I tried to dye the egg magenta. The color did not take very well over the red. Same with dark red. In fact, the dark red dye turned the egg a nasty blotchy shade of brown. It didn’t look good and the color would not wash off completely with Ivory soap. I decided to soak the egg briefly in vinegar to etch the shell and return it to white. After that, I attempted to dye the egg turquoise and royal blue, but these dyes took very unevenly. The water inside the eggshell kept bubbling out through the shell and formed interesting, splotchy patterns on the shell. I kind of like the splotchy look of the blue areas, although it wasn’t intentional.

Today I decided to make another abstract egg pysanky, similar in design to the modern egg that I messed up earlier this month. On this duck egg, I’m going to use mostly warm colors — lemon yellow, apricot gold (the current color), and then orange, red, magenta, etc. I’ve only dyed and waxed two colors so far, but it is a fairly simple block design and hopefully I can finish it by tomorrow. The challenging thing for me is to get the wax lines really straight and even.

Today I started working on my first goose egg pysanky. So far I’ve drawn a curved design in wax on the egg, which was initially dyed red/rubine. The curved design is repeated around the egg four times. I then outlined the curved shapes (after dying the egg in dark red) and then I dyed the egg magenta (producing a mauve-purple color). Tomorrow I will finish filling in the curved shapes and background with other colors. This goose egg is quite a bit larger than a standard chicken egg (pictured in the background of the photo).

For my latest egg, I wanted to do something different involving larger areas of color. I found an image of an abstract painting by the artist Jay McVicker and attempted to create an egg in a similar (though not identical) style. I drew guidelines on the egg with watercolor pencil and filled in some of the areas with wax. The colors I’ve used so far are lime green, apple green, green-blue, and dark turquoise blue. I hope to finish the egg tomorrow and post the results.

Today I finished applying the wax on the lime green egg that I started yesterday. The pattern was an abstract basket-weave pattern with some variations. It was a good project to practice with the electric kistky. A lot of my wax lines were not exactly straight (and impossible to correct once drawn), but the mistakes and wonky lines mostly blend into the overall design. After I completed the wax application over the lime green egg, I dyed the remaining unwaxed parts turquoise. Then I removed the wax in the oven. It was satisfying to be able to finish an egg in only 2 days.

I had a long day today. Bad things just kept happening (first I fell on the ice while carrying our daughter, then our kitchen sink faucet broke, the replacement faucet was broken, the second replacement faucet was also broken, our daughter fell inside and busted her lip, we broke one of our favorite bowls…etc). ugh. I wasn’t feeling inspired so I just started drawing a linear design on my latest duck egg. It looks a little like basket-weaving. Tomorrow I hope to finish the main wax design and add more colors.

Today I started working on a paisley patterned duck egg which will be in red and pink tones. I’m drawing the paisley design mostly freehand. Curved designs like this one are a bit more challenging for me to draw in wax than straight-line designs like yesterday’s egg. Hopefully by tomorrow I can get the primary part of the design waxed and can start dying the egg more colors.

I finally understand the hype about duck eggs, and why so many people like using them for making pysanky. The surface of a duck egg is remarkably smooth compared to a grocery-store chicken egg. And that makes it much easier to make smooth straight lines with the kistka. I began dying and waxing my first large duck egg today. The design (so far) is more geometric than anything I’ve done previously. I used the egg lathe with a watercolor pencil to make even divisions on the egg. Tomorrow I hope to finish this egg and will post the result.

Today I worked more on the green egg that I started dying yesterday. The first part of the design (the green leaves with brown stems) was inspired by my jade plant. But it was looking too Christmas-y, so I outlined the leaves in gray, and added pink and blue to the background. (I’m using an electric kistka tool to heat and apply the wax, and aniline dyes to color the eggs.) I also used goo-gone to erase part of the wax design that I wasn’t happy with.

The final result was nice, but somewhat mottled in color. When I removed the wax from the outside of the egg, some of the dye started coming off as well, creating this uneven look. This doesn’t usually happen. I think I didn’t allow the egg to dry enough between dying and waxing.  Hopefully I can be more patient with my next egg!