Decorating Easter Eggs

Fancy Easter Egg Decorating

Painting and Decorating Blown Out Eggs

[ Read Preparing Eggs for Decoration first.]

Once your eggshells have dried, they're ready for painting and decorating.

You can use craft paints - use flat paint in paler tones for the background, brighter enamels for the decoration. To protect your artwork, spray with a clear enamel.

A beautiful traditional method of egg decorating requires that you dip the eggshell into melted wax.

Let the wax harden and then scratch off portions to make your design; or draw a design with lines of dripped wax.

When you dye the shell, the wax will resist the color and only the un-waxed portions of the shell will take up the dye. In artistic terms, this is called wax resist.

Wax-resist eggs have a long and treasured tradition in much of Eastern Europe. Most of the ethnic terms for wax-resist eggs come from the Slavic root "pisac" - to write.

In Poland and Russia, they are known as pisanka and in the Ukraine, pysanka. In Croatia, Slovenia and Serbia, they are called pisanica.

You can trace your design in pencil first if you like. Rubber bands can be stretched gently around the shell to form a straightedge.

The wax resist process can be repeated with different dye colors as many times as needed to reach the desired effect.

When your design is complete, remove the wax by heating the shell briefly in hot water. Then polish the surface by rubbing in the residual wax.

With practice, you can create museum quality eggs using this method.

Other Egg Decorations

Getting more into the modern age, you can purchase small decals, rub-ons or stickers in craft stores to apply to the eggshells. Rick-rack, thin ribbon or colored string can be used as trim.

You can also add your choice of embellishments - from sequins to seed beads to glitter sprinkled over white glue applied through stencils. Or even glitter the entire shell, as is described in this article on how to make Glittery Christmas Ornaments.

More Uses for Decorated Eggs

My husband tells how his Polish grandmother used to make pisanka into Christmas ornaments by fashioning them into little hot air balloons.

She would create a net out of darning thread and fit the net over the egg extending down to hold the hot air balloon basket. The base of the pipe cleaner basket was always a silver dollar! In addition to being a pretty special gift to a child at that time, the coin served to weight the net so it would hang properly.

I don't know if today's kids would be as impressed, but my DH still talks about these marvelous pisanka creations today.