Spanky with Kim

Sounds dirty. Isn't. Spanky is what we call Pysanky. It's a way of decorating eggs with wax and dye. It's how they make those really intricately designed Ukrainian eggs. Kim has all the dye and equipment and we learned back in high school art class how to do it, so we've been doing it around Easter time for a few years.

That's all the stuff you need. You need to soak the egg in vinegar for a few minutes before you start. Gloves to protect the egg from the oils on your hand which will resist the dye slightly and make marks on your egg. Lots of paper towel. Over ten different dyes in jars.

The process is kind of backwards. You dye it a color (starting with the lighest color) and then put wax over top of that color wherever you want that color to stay on the egg. Then you dye it the next color, put wax on, etc.

I started with what I wanted white, which was the outline of my pattern. Kim started an egg she meant to do light grey to start, but it turned out dark grey so she was going to do dark grey and black, but when she was finishing the egg she dropped it onto the table and it got a little cracked. Then when she was finishing it anyway, she squished it right on the cracked area and it broke all in her hand. Nasty.

My first color was yellow, so i dyed it yellow then covered the part I wanted to be yellow in wax. This is what that looked like when I was done. Then I went through all the colors, from lightest to darkest, putting wax where I wanted that color. When it was all covered in wax, except the section I last dyed, I (got Kim to) melt all the wax with the candle flame and wipe it off. And then you have your beautiful dyed egg!

Kim's second attempt was going to be a random pattern but as she was filling in a big section with wax by pouring it on, she made a big blob where she didn't want so she got mad and gave up. For her third egg, she decided to not try any pattern and all and instead dripped wax onto her egg making lots of blobs in all different colors and then finishing with black. The result was awesome and totally 80's and reminded us of a shitty rock n' bowl.


Our masterpieces! Hopefully mine doesn't rot like last time. You need to keep them somewhere they'll get ventilation because we didn't empty them like the pros do. Kim assures me if I just keep it on top of paper towel it'll be okay because she still has one from last year that's fine.