March Craft #3: A Sucky Pysanka!!!!

So many things went wrong with this egg, I almost don't know where to start. First of all, my dyes are really, really old and I didn't mix new ones. Second of all, I apparently don't know what I'm doing when it comes to using vinegar to etch color away, then start fresh with white.

This is a duck egg. If you don't know, the process of pysanky goes like this: start with an egg. Draw lines in wax, which will remain white (if you didn't dye the egg first). Dip in a dye. Draw more lines in wax, which will remain the color of the dye, and so on and so forth for hours and hours on end.


My colors turned out way too pastel for my taste. And you can't even see the flowers at the ends of those green stems because I forgot that I had outlined them in a light blue and this blue-ish color was the best dark color I could achieve for my background. Oh, well.


We'll call it a real Easter-ish Easter egg because of all the pastel colors.


There sits the new ugly egg amongst other past creations. In the forefront, you can see an etched brown chicken egg (it started as brown, then by etching with vinegar, the under layers of shell can be seen). In the middle is one of my favorite eggs of all time--a white, etched goose egg which you can't see the detail of because of the flash. And back there is an etched emu egg which is beautiful in its detail even though I etched too much the first time around, leaving me with only my original outlines and no chance to achieve extra depth of color. (Emu eggs are also white at their core, but I never wanted it to go all the way white.)


And just for the heck of it, some other eggs I've done. Ugh, I hate spending hours on something only to have it turn out not like I want it to.

I should go check on Elliott now, too. All of the crashing sounds coming from his room show that his naptime is truly exhausting him. Maybe he'll get to sleep now.