Friday Egg: Prickly Pear Cactus

Happy Friday! I've been working on a series that I will talk about at another time, but out of it has come a design that I am really happy with and will be pursuing further in the future I'm sure. This is a fun design to look at and a fun design to create, with all the bubbly cactus ears and spines traveling up the egg. The greens are different values of Key Lime and the pink of the cactus flowers is Rhodamine.

I was so tired last night that I forgot that the egg was still in dye, so the usually tiny imperfections where I didn't cover evenly and perfectly with wax are magnified after an overnight in the dye. Pysanky dyes are made with vinegar, which eats at the eggshell and gives it some "tooth" into which the dye particles can settle. The long bath in vinegar last night means that the egg was etched a lot more than normal. After too long of an etch, the vinegar begins to undercut the areas that are dyed. You can see that in some of the color change areas in the cactus ears, where the black dots are eating into the white lines. Not the end of the world with this sort of free-form and cartoonish design, but an interesting example of over-etching.

Have a great weekend!