Many kinds of eggs

 Here is our little egg tree at the center of our dining table.  We created lots of different kinds of Eastery eggs in our house this past week.  We dyed hard boiled eggs with fruits and veggies.  We dyed hallow out eggs with tissue paper.  Inspired by Katherine Milhous's 'The Egg Tree' we attempted Ukrainian eggs.  Let me tell you: not as easy as you might think.  Or perhaps I was just being naive when I thought hey 'I can do this.  No problem!'  Well I'm sure I can do it but the learning curve is just a bit more than an afternoon.  I think at this rate I'll be really proficient in about 15 years.  But it was fun and I look forward to trying again next year.

 We hallowed these eggs out with an egg blower and then painted them with vinegar water and wrapped them in Japanese tissue paper. (Incidentally this paper is great for dying silk scarves with.  We'll be doing that project in a couple weeks.  I'll be sure to post pics.)   We then painted them again with vinegar water to make the paper stick.  When the paper dried we pealed it off and I put strings in them.  I wrapped floss around a bit of toothpick and tucked the toothpick through the tiny top hole (where we blew the egg out).  Then when you gently pull the string back the toothpick shifts to the long way and holds the thread tight inside.

 My attempt at a Ukrainian egg.  Quite difficult to achieve straight lines.  It did end up with more colors.  But I don't have a photo of the final egg.

 Lillian working on her Ukrainian egg.  We used a tool called a Kistka which has a little reservoir for melted beeswax and a tiny hole where it comes out onto the egg to block the dye from touching the egg. You heat it over a candle flame pretty regularly to get the wax to stay melted.  We used a book called 'A Kid's Guide to Decorating Ukrainian Easter Eggs' by Natalie Perchyshyn.  I found it to be a great little book for beginners.