My friend Lydia has seen pictures of these eggs for several months finally asked me, "Is it ink or paint?" When I am doing shows, many people ask me if these are stickers or decals or if I have a stencil I use to put the designs on. I realize that I should post a general idea of how these beautiful eggs are made. No ink or paint, no stencils or shortcuts, each one of these eggs are created using a batik process with beeswax and dyes. I prepared the following presentation for my Christmas show. It plays on continuous loop on an eframe. Sometimes it is easier to show than tell, and with this tutorial (which I borrowed from a tutorial I posted last year), I am able to explain the process with pictures. So without further ado: Here's how I make these eggs!
There is no step three! I mis-numbered these steps and skipped the number three, but I hope you can ignore my error and move right on to Step Four:
Please tell me how you wash the black dye off in step one. Do you need to use bleach? I've never tried this, but I love the effect you have here.
ReplyDeleteThat would have been a good thing to talk about, right? I will have to re-do this to address this and a few other problems I see now. There are various ways to wash the dye off. I generally use regular Ivory dish soap and a soft toothbrush to get off as much as I can and then put in full strength white vinegar for a minute or two to etch back down to white shell (or longer if I want to actually etch the egg.) Use the soft toothbrush to gently scrub the egg again under running water and you should have a bright white egg again. I have also used Simple Green or diluted bleach, but Ivory and vinegar seem easier.
ReplyDelete