For many families a great annual ‘at home art’ tradition is decorating Easter eggs! There are many different ways of decorating eggs but one of my favorite types of Easter eggs are pysanky. A pysanka is a Ukrainian Easter egg, decorated with traditional Ukrainian folk designs using a wax-resist method. The word pysanka comes from the verb pysaty, "to write" or "to inscribe", as the designs are not painted on, but written (inscribed) with beeswax. The results from this method are quite extraordinary and can be viewed in The Egg Painter. In this 5-minute National Geographic Elena Craciunescu, one of a dozen egg painters in the small village of Ciocăneşti, Romania, explains the art and tradition of dyeing eggs. Many other Central and Eastern European ethnic groups decorate eggs using wax for Easter. These include the Belarusians, Bulgarians, Carpatho-Rusyns, Croats, Czechs, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Poles, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes and Sorbs.
Besides pysanka there are so many other fun ways to decorate your Easter eggs. I am including links to some of my favorites. If you are looking for a fun and easy method try dying your egg using shaving cream and food colouring. If you want to spend more time on it you can try a mosaic egg, mandala egg or galaxy egg. The next links use natural dyes and materials to create leaves and flowers motifs on your egg. If this is more your style you will want to check out the last link I have included with instructions on how to make all sorts of natural dyes.
If you have a favorite way to decorate Easter eggs we would love to see it! Take a picture and tag us #temiskamingartgallery. That's it for now. Have a great day folks. Toon in tomorrow for another great art/craft idea. Sincerely; Your friendly neighbourhood art gallery.