Want to create stunning, gorgeous, and truly impressive Eastern European style Easter eggs? Skip those tired old food colored dyed pastel Easter eggs this year. Instead, pick up some supplies, put the kids to bed, and create these heirloom quality Easter eggs that you can display year after year after year and hand down to your children.
If you are going to create pysanky Easter eggs, you can’t begin your pysanky Easter egg project with nothing but some food coloring, some tooth picks, and hope that your grocery store Easter egg supplies are going to cut it. Instead, you need to make a one time investment in some real pysanky Easter egg supplies. You don’t have to spend a fortune, and you don’t have to fly to Eastern Europe to pick up your dyes and your stylus. Instead, you just need to hop on the computer and find some websites that sell all the supplies that you need to create stunning pysanky eggs. Here are the supplies that you will need.
Supplies you need for pysanky Easter eggs
Dyes
There are 6 basic colors that are used to create pysanky eggs: yellow, orange, light blue, light green, bright red (or scarlet), and black. If you are really going to go all the way with your pysanky creations and you are going to take your dedication to the next level, then you can also purchase the following colors for your pysanky eggs: gold, purple, turquoise, royal blue, brick, dark red, red (or cherry), pink, brown, and dark green.
Even though you can find food coloring in these colors, you do need to purchase real Ukrainian Easter egg dyes. Pysanky eggs require particular dyes, and you will not have the vibrant colors that you want if you do not purchase the right dyes for your Easter eggs.
Orange dye wash
In addition to the other basic colors that you need to purchase for pysanky, you also need to purchase an orange dye wash. You need this orange dye wash so that you can dip the egg in the wash before you use orange dye. You need to protect orange dye from losing its brightness when it is combined with blues and greens. Orange dye wash is not absolutely necessary unless you want good-looking oranges on your pysanky eggs.
Kistka
The kistka is the stylus that is used to create pysanky Easter eggs. You can use either an electric stylus or you can use traditional wooden styluses. The traditional styluses consist of a wooden dowel that is the handle, along with a brass funnel that is connected to the handle with a copper wire. You will heat up the funnel by placing it in a candle flame; then you scoop the wax with the funnel end. Then you heat up the funnel again in order to melt the wax, which will flow out of the funnel. You can also buy a very thin wire that you can use to clean out the funnel of the kistka.
Beeswax
The beeswax is what is used to block the dye from adhering to the egg, and is what creates the gorgeous design. Beeswax works better than candle wax, because it sticks to the egg much better than regular old candle wax does.
There are more supplies that you can purchase to create pysanky eggs. Again, you can find all of these supplies online at stores that specialize in pysanky Easter egg supplies.
