Family Egg Decorating

From the Creon Family

Lorain writes:

When I was a teenager in our small church school, my good friend Pam was just my friend's mother. But really she was more than that. She was a mentor to me without me knowing it. She brought to my life and the lives of those in our school some much needed education about art, beauty, and music appreciation. I was not so very good at showing how much I appreciated it at the time, but deep down where no one could see I certainly did appreciate it very much. (I was one to hide my real feelings and show only those things I deemed might look "cool" to my peers.... often getting neither effect. haha) At any rate, Pam introduced us to many things that i love to appreciate as an adult. I smile each time one of my children gets to try out one of the many types of art she exposed us to.

One of those that she showed us was Ukrainian egg design. We blew duck eggs, drew designs with psanki tools and beeswax and used the real-deal egg design dye. We loved it so much we did it 2 different years if I remember correctly. Here is one of the only ones I made that is still preserved for today:

As my kids grew we did the traditional egg dying that I grew up with... you know the Paas ones with the tablets. We quickly decided we really didn't like those all that much and Grandma took over the egg dying for a few years... we tried a little marbling, and the shrink wraps, and crayon writing and eventually just decided that for boiled eggs, we just like the food coloring dyed ones the best (and they were easy).

A few years ago I decided they were old enough to do a variation of the psanki egg design, and after the first time they were hooked... so much so that now with 9 children, we now do what I was never brave enough to do with 2 children... we let toddlers use the wax and tools, with help. But we still have stuck with the food dye. We've used various food colorings over the years, but the Wilton icing dye remains the favorite (we tried it a few years back and went back to it this year.)

Someday when I don't have toddlers (will that ever be true?) I hope we can get more intricate and use the real dye, but for now they get lots of practice and for the first time in a while I eek in something artsy.....
First we help the younger ones, and then Katrina and Evelyn and I each do a couple eggs ourselves. We are, of course, never satisfied, because it's hard to work on your skills much with only 2 eggs per year, but we try anyway, and we talk about new birth in Jesus resurrection, and the coming Easter celebration. I really like to do the egg dying after Good Friday so that we can absorb all the solemnity at our evening service and then color eggs and prepare for Easter on Saturday. It doesn't always work out that way, but this year it did.

The kids prefer to skip the egg dying almost completely (or just help grandma color some boiled eggs at her house) if we can't do this.

This has become a tradition for our family

Thanks, Pam.

Here is my Good Friday Cross... taken from our church during service (while I was checking on a sleeping little one)

Here are the final products.. Writing on each egg in parentheses

 Gavin 2

Talya 3

Ethan 5

Abigail 7

Braden 9 (Jesus Lives)

Bridget 11 (The Sword; King of the Jews)(I love you; He is Risen) (I AM)

Katrina 12 (Christ the Lord is Risen Today) (Greater is He who is living in me than he who is in the world)

Evelyn 14 (Go Tell it on the Mountain) ( God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son)

Loraine (He is Risen INDEED) (He is not here; Come see)

Always so fun to see the finished product unveiled!

Thanks for letting us share.