My Travel Paint Studio has arrived, and I'm testing the different paints. On my test egg I started by smearing out a little of each type of paint, just to get a feel for the consistency. After it dries I'm going to cover a part of each smear with wax, then dye the lot in a dark purple dye and see what happens when I try to remove the wax.

Initial impressions so far:

• Neopaque colors are a "light-bodied acrylic." They are (obviously) opaque. I haven't tried them on a dyed egg yet, but my gut is that NOTHING will show through this paint. I also bet it's pretty dye-resistant since it's acrylic. I don't think I'll use these much, unless I need a colored resist for some reason.


• Textile Colors are nice and transparent. They're maybe a little thicker than milk, which makes the paint run over the egg's surface if too much is applied. I tried applying some as a wash using a sponge and liked the end result, even though I had to work at it for a while. The transparency will be fun to use on top of dye.


• The "Sherril's Sorbets" colors are pastel, which I don't use much. The paint itself seems to be a standard acrylic. I dabbed a little on with my fingers, and got very opaque coverage. The colors are pretty, but I don't think I'll be using much of this.


• Lumiere Metallics could be lots of fun as a finishing touch. The paint is just metallic acrylic. Nice thickness -- easy to apply without making distracting bumps all over the egg. Nice colors, although I would have liked to have a silver in the set I purchased.


• Finally, Dye-Na-Flow paints were just wonderful. Nice transparent colors that blend together beautifully. They're very runny, which makes application difficult. Despite that, I think this is going to be a new favorite of mine. In a few weeks I'll order some dye thickener and see if that helps.

I also decorated an egg using one of the Fabricolor markers. It was an undyed egg, and my next step will be to dye it yellow, then wax a pattern, then dye again and remove the wax. Should be interesting.

The whole purpose of this blog is to keep a detailed, step-by-step record of how I create an egg. It's a good goal, but it just isn't working. I try, but I get so caught up in the process that I forget to take notes or to snap a few pictures. The last step, just before the wax removal, is especially difficult for me to photograph. I'm always so excited by this step that I forget to take three seconds to grab the camera first.

I'm also trying to dig up all my older journal entries and copy them into this blog. At this point I have a few very recent entries, and then a handful of entries that are over a year old. Hopefully I'll find more material in the next few weeks, which will hopefully give this collection some cohesion. For now, though, we will embrace chaos.

I have several eggs sitting in dye now. Fabric dye, I feel, is superior to traditional pysanky dyes in many ways -- it's waterproof once it has dried, there is a wide range of colors, and it's available at the local grocery store so I don't have to wait on the postman to start a dye bath. There are tradeoffs, though. One of the main ones is TIME. Traditional dyes work pretty quickly, but fabric dyes can take a LONG time. It isn't uncommon for me to leave an egg in a dye bath overnight, especially if I need a dark color like black or navy blue.

Yesterday's "ugly eggs" are on the road to recovery. I went ahead as planned and doused them in Fantastic, then ran an old electric toothbrush over the surface. The resulting eggs are interesting. I had enough success with the technique that I've treated a few more "hopeless" eggs in hopes of making masterpieces.

This egg is my favorite "saved" egg so far -- too bad I cracked a hole in the end while working on it! The first image shows an OK egg -- good but nothing spectacular -- minutes before I submerged it in Rit Tangerine dye. The tangerine dye was MUCH too dark. I was after a light orange but ended up with a dark tangelo color, exactly like the Mineola Tangelos in the grocery store. It was horrible. I honestly thought removing the wax would help. It didn't.

The second image shows the egg after I covered it in Fantastik and removed most of the dye with an electric toothbrush. MUCH better. Now we have some contrast and texture. The blue is muted, and the orange is interesting instead of annoying.

Here is a before shot of a scarlet egg with a nice wax pattern on it. I really liked the wax, and couldn't wait to see the finished egg. Problem is that I couldn't figure out what color to go with next. I was sick of red/yellow eggs, and didn't want to risk failure with a tricky red/green combination. I also didn't want to go white, because I was sure I'd never get the red out and would end up with a pink egg instead. My final choice was to try for a deep purple, and hope that the blue tones in the purple would look good with the orangy tones in the red.

The purple was a failure. I just couldn't get it dark enough, even after leaving it in the dye bath overnight. The best I could do wasn't all that different from the scarlet shade already on the egg. There wasn't enough contrast to make things interesting. Fantastik to the rescue! Before removing the wax I hit the egg with fantastic and scraped off a good deal of the purple color. I added a little purple back in wherever needed using very thinned-down Setacolor paint. Lastly I removed the wax, and uncovered this beauty. It still needs something. My next step is to faintly outline some of the red lines with Lumiere silver once my traveling paint kit arrives. I want to keep the lines as smooth and as tiny as possible, and will probably use a toothpick instead of a paintbrush.

Very disapointed with my eggs this week. None of them really sing. The colors just aren't working. One egg especially, a red egg with a lovely waxed pattern, just isn't doing anything. It lacks contrast. I don't want it any darker, and I can't get the red to come off so I can place it in a new bath of something lighter. When I get home this afternoon I'll hit it with Fantastik and see if that helps. Fantastic is a wonderful household cleaner sold in a spray bottle. There are several types, but I've only played with two. The formula with orange oil takes off dye and wax, but the normal formula leaves the wax in place while removing the dye. It works more quickly than bleach or vinegar. Quick is good.