How to Make Ukrainian Easter Eggs

One of my favorite childhood memories was coloring Easter eggs with my sister in the backyard under our maple tree which was much smaller back then.

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I remember my mother setting up little-colored plastic cups, and filling them with water and vinegar, and then we’d watch as the little fizzy color tabs would dye the water. I’d scribble flowers, hearts, and lines on my little egg and then pop it into one of the six colors. Eventually, though, all the eggs seemed to end up the same kind of greenish khaki color from being dipped in too many additional colors. We would then put stickers on them of bunnies, chicks, and flowers and present them proudly to our mother who would say how pretty they are. She would politely ignore the multicolor-dyed hands of her children in favor of our smiles, and she would dutifully clean up the mess of spilled dye and leftover sticker remnants on the little table outside. As an adult, the smell of vinegar still reminds me of those days.

I have a lot of eastern European countries in my DNA including Ukrainian and I remembered seeing on TV the history of Ukrainian Easter Egg Art. This is a dying art form (pun intended). It takes a lot of patience, and time to create some of intricate traditional designs. The process includes masking off areas using beewax and layering colors. The end color is usually black, and once that’s done, the wax is melted off to reveal all the other colors that have been protected by the wax during the dying process. Here’s a fantastic video about the process.

I love art and tend to pick up artistic things pretty easily. So while planning for this post, I remembered how much I wanted to learn how to do this as a child. Curiosity got to me, and I decided to see if there was such a thing as a kit on Amazon I was so happy to see that in fact there are and they seem to be priced fairly well! So I decided to try my hand at it.

So the first part of the process is to clean out the egg. I actually remembered my mother doing this for a craft project. You make a small hole in one end, and a slightly larger egg in the other. Using a paper clip you kind of scramble the contents and then carefully blow in the small hole to expel it out the larger one. Once the contents are removed (and used to make an omelet or something) it’s good to pop them into a warm soapy water bath and then let them dry completely. Be sure to flip them every once in a while too. The first time I did this, I didn’t flip them and they still had liquid coming out a day later, which was as gross as it sounds. This is a lot of work, so I suggest that you do a bunch at a time and allow yourself at least 24 hours to let them dry out.

If you’re looking to try something new this spring, I highly suggest trying this out. Let me know what you think in the comments! If you would like exclusive content into my life then feel free to follow my social media listed on the sidebar! Have a wonderful day!

-Heather Autumn