Pysanky ☆

[yuuago]

I finished making my pysanky for this year yesterday.







I did a few things differently than previous years - I haven't used the crosshatching technique before - and I like the effect that gave.

Kept running into some trouble with the kistka getting clogged, though. I'm going to give both of them a good clean.

There is a type of cleansing dye that you can get, and I think I'll try that next year. Basically, you use it to strip/"wash back" strong colours so that you can put another colour over it. It can be difficult to get a really vibrant red when dying over orange, or a clear black when dying over red, so apparently this technique allows for crisper colours. I'm really curious to see how effective it is. Though, that'll need to wait until next year of course. ;)

One thing I would love to try is drop-pull pysanky, but I don't have the necessary things for that, so I'm going to have to shelve that thought for a while.

Comments

[rachelmanija]

Wow! Those are GORGEOUS.

Do you blow out the eggs and paint the shells?

[yuuago]

:D Thank you!

Yes, they're blown out. The colours are put on by using wax and a dye soak.

[eggsbenedict]

They're so pretty! :D I love the extra birds, too!

[hokuton_punch]

Ooh, those are beautiful. ♥ The cleansing dye sounds very interesting, I hope it works out for next year!

[allekha]

Those are so pretty! My favorite is the one with the chicken, but they all look lovely.

[straightforwardly]

They're lovely! ♥

[torachan]

Wow, those turned out great!

[st_aurafina]

They are so beautiful! I love the black background.

[seerofrage]

Oooohh, these are so pretty! Love the one on the top-leftish and the bottom-left especially, but they all look great! :D

[yuuago]

<3 Thank you!
The extra birds were my mom's idea. :D

[yuuago]

<3!
If it works as intended, it means I'll need to spend less time holding the eggs in the dye, so... hopefully! :D

[yuuago]

I think I like that one the best too! :D

[yuuago]

<3 Thank you!

[yuuago]

Thanks! :D I was pretty pleased, ngl.

[yuuago]

Thank you! :D
I love the black too. You have to leave them in there a long time to get something really crisp with the black, but it's worth it.

[yuuago]

<3 Thank youuuu!

[kanadka]

I love them - I think the colours turned out super crisp and that middle one looks like the ones I've seen in books. The bottom right one, too! Big fan of that beautiful wheat pattern, it came out lovely. Your pysanky game is on point!!

If the drop-pull pysanky is what I think it is, that's what I did this year! Well, a baby version anyway.

[yuuago]

:D I was mimicking traditional designs with those two, nice to hear that it came across effectively!

Drop-pull are the ones where you dip the tool into wax and then drop+pull the wax onto the eggshell to create designs. The tools I'm using now are the ones that have a well for the wax that you use to "write" on the egg.

I'd be curious to see what your eggs look like! '3'

[kanadka]

They do look so traditional!! It's that great black/red/orange/yellow palette too.

The ones I was doing were supposed to be a Polish-style in that you dye the egg, then you put the wax on, and you're done (i.e. you leave the wax on). There's a Sorbian variant that might be closer to the Ukrainian version where (iirc?) you keep them white, then do your design in the wax, then dye, then remove wax. Closer to what you do but without kistka. Anyway:

here's my attempt! The background colour is really patchy - that's my poor dye job at work.

[yuuago]

Ahhh yours are cute!

What did you use for the dye, onion skin?

[kanadka]

Aaah, thanks! That means a lot coming from pysanky-master yuu :D The one at bottom is onion skin, yes - the other brown one was tea. The yellow ones are turmeric and none of them came out really clean and solid-coloured.

What do you use for your dyes, by the way?

[yuuago]

For me, I use pysanky dye - like from https://ukrainianeggcessories.com/ (Canadian) or https://www.bestpysanky.com/ (USA, these are the ones I used this year). I'd like to experiment with using food colouring, but I never think that far ahead. x)

[kanadka]

There's always next year!! :D

Maybe a dumb question, but do you dye them after you've blown them out? If so, how do you get them to stay immersed?

[yuuago]

Yeah, I blow them out first, plug the hole with wax, and then when they're in the dye I hold them down with a spoon. Sometimes I have to hold them down for several minutes in order to get the dye to take properly, especially for the dark colours - so that's why I'm interested in trying the cleansing wash I mentioned in main post.

Some people wax/dye them first and then blow them out, since you don't have to hold them down that way. But there are various reasons to not do it in that order, too.

[kanadka]

That makes sense! With the vegetable dyes they recommended an overnight soak so I went with paper towels and hoped for the best, but it's not nearly as consistent as the dyes you used. Those birds are Uniform!

I'm surprised it's the dark colours that take awhile to take, I would've thought those would be on there super fast.

[yuuago]

The problem mainly coming from putting one bold colour over another. So orange over yellow is no difficulty, but if you want to dye black over red, it needs to sit in there for longer if you don't want the red to show through.