Pysanka 2014

We had a homeschool group come over to do Pysanka eggs with beeswax candles. We were learning about Russia and the Ukraine in a geography club.

We use a hot stylus to apply beeswax designs to a hollowed egg. The stylus has a little cup that holds a reservoir of melted wax and a hole in the bottom to draw with. We use the candle flame for heating the stylus and melt the beeswax.

Photo from squidoo.com

Here we are carefully drawing on eggs with wax. The wax resists dye, so they used the wax to mask color.

Making Pysanka is a sequence of applying beeswax and then dipping in dye. We dye the light colors first, so we don't contaminate them with darker colors. Pysanka dye is very permanent. We went through MANY paper towels in drying the dye on the eggs.

Once the final coat of dye is applied, we melted the on the eggs with the candle flame heat and wiped wax off with a paper towel.

Here are the final Pysanky. The kids ranged in age from 4 to 13. Didn't they do a nice job? I loved how seriously they took this craft project. They were so polite and respectful of our dyes and equipment.