Materials -- Basic Dyes and Paints

Basic Dyes

I like fabric dye better than traditional pysanky dyes. Don't get me wrong, the pysanky dyes are great, but they have some features that I personally consider disadvantages. Remember, these so-called "disadvantages" have to do with my personal working style.

• Price. A packet of pysanky dye can cose upwards of .75 cents. The packet holds maybe a teaspoon of dye. Rit dye, on the other hand, generally holds over a tablespoon a box. I seldom pay retail for the dye. Instead I go through every "marked for immediate clearance" bin at every grocery store I see, and can generally keep enough dye in stock. Today, for instance, I found about two dozen boxes of Evening Blue for .50 cents a box. I bought four boxes. The Rit liquid dyes are nice, but as they don't go on sale as often I tend to ignore them.
  
• Unpredictability. I don't measure. (gasp!!) I enjoy the freedom of not measuring. Those nice little white pysanky dye envelopes bring out latent anal-retenative tendencies in me, and make me run for my measuring spoons. I don't like that -- I want the entire process to be as chancy as possible.
  
• Durability. Fabric dyes are meant to be worn next to our chemical-dispersing skin, out in the sun, and washed repeatedly in the washer. I'm sure they fade eventually, but I bet they give pysanky dyes a run for their money. And no, I've never tested this. One day maybe I will.
  
• Slow-acting. Fabric dyes take an unbelievably long time to color anything. This gives me the freedom to immerse an egg, forget about it, and remember it again a few hours later. (Yes, I burn cookies but bake beautiful cakes.)
  

I typically use Rit dyes, although I've been known to use Dylon dyes. (Dylon isn't on sale as often, and comes in smaller packages.) To make a batch of dye I heat water in an old coffee maker, spill in some dye, add a aplash of vinegar, and stir. If I'm in a hurry I'll refrigerate the dye until the temperature drops. Have to be very careful here -- adding a freshly-waxed egg to hot water is a bad idea. You don't want all your wax to melt off.

I don't know if a bath will last "for years" as some claim pysanky dyes will. I tend to throw my dye out when it starts looking skanky.

My dyes are stored in two old spice rack sets. I covered the bottles with electric tape (lightfast if ugly).

Easter Egg Dyes

I love children's dye sets. The colors are always so bright and pure!! The best time to buy Easter Egg dyes is the day after Easter. I visit Target and stock up every year. Most child's dye sets come with one of three types of dyes -- tablets, color crystals, and pouches.

Tablets (mostly PAAS kits) are great. I typically dilute a tablet in about a tablespoon of vinegar and apply it to the egg using a spoung, a small paint brush, or other implement. It's also the dye-of-choice when using the PAAS tie-dye kit, which everyone should do at least once. PAAS sells sets with six colors, eight to ten colors, and a larger kit with more colors. Look at the back of the box and go for the kit with the most colors.

Color crystals (Sun-Hill and Dudley) aren't the most useful colors, but with a little imagination you can have some fun with them. I like cutting down a puppy training pad into a bandana-sized square, covering the pad with color crystals, and sprinkling on water. Next I'll wrap an egg into the pad, and secure with a bread tie. Saran wrap or a plastic baggie can also be used.

Pouch dyes are a broad category. Dudley is the biggest manufacturer of pouch dyes. Some pouch dyes, specifically the ones from spounging kits, are very nice to work with but difficult to dye over. If you use these you'll want to 1) vinegar after waxing or 2) use them as a last step. Some pouch dyes are as weak as food colors. If you ever see a Dudley egg spinner do yourself a favor and grab one!! They're a load of fun, and they come with nice pouch dyes. AVOID the PAAS marbeling dyes. They look wonderful, but they contain a sticky-sticky-sticky resin. Your eggs will be sticky for years. Ugh.

A few other specific dyes to avoid -- over the past few years I've seen dyes in little bunny-rabbit shaped containers, sort of like fancy bath oil. They're produced by (I think) Daisy Kingdom. Those dyes suck. The other Daisy Kingdom dyes are OK, but avoid the rabbit-shaped dyes!!

European Dyes -- A few years ago I bought egg kits from HomeCrafts in Great Brittian. I fell in love with two products. The Egg Coloring Papers are a lot of fun. Super-bright neon colors. If you hit the colors with a spray bottle while the eggs are drying you get neat little splotchy places. The "Mother of Pearl" (or Egg pearl Shimmer Colours) are also fun. This paint (it isn't really dye at all) actually takes dye very well, so I've been known to use it as a base color, wax it, and then dye over it.

I'm longing to find someone in Europe to swap kits with. I would love to know what else is available.

Other Fun Stuff

These are other coloring agents I use on a regular basis. Things I like most are near the top of the list.

• Fabric BloPens (If you can find them, buy them!!!!! I'm not sure they're being made any longer!!)
  
• Rubber stamp embossing powder
• Setacolor Soleil
• Lumiere fabric paints (nice metallics)
• Jaquard textile paints
• Dye-na-flow dyes
  
• Pearl-Ex
• Metallic acrylic paints
• Non-metallic acrylics (Neopaque)
  

More Photos

Broken Beauty

This egg wasn't finished, but it had potential. Had. It's in Egg Heaven now.

Hmmmm . . .

Yellow reject egg with strange waxed design. I decided to run with it, and dyed it teal. Then I added more wax, and dyed it purple. Hmmm . . . Not sure I'm finsihed with this.

This Is My Good Side

Looks good from this side, but the verso isn't so stunning. I messed up big-time with the embossing powder.

Fabric Markers

Yellow egg with blue pattern drawn on with fabric marker. I don't much care for fabric marker s -- they're too controllable. Waxed on concentric bands, then dyed the egg pinkish and finally hit it with the magenta BloPen.

So Far So Good

This originally-pink egg has a design waxed on it years ago, and I decided today to dye it blue. Hmmm. Somehow I ended up with brown. Not finished with this one yet.



I think I really would have liked this one if I hadn't screwed up and left a freaking SOOT MARK on the egg!!! I love that rubber stamp embossing powder, but I have to find a better way to heat it. Irons don't work -- the egg is round, after all -- and neither do heat guns designed for the purpose, as they tend to blow the powder everywhere. I'm not any good with toaster ovens -- I've scorched too many eggs to like working with 'em. So, right now, a candle is my best solution. Until something like this spoils the work.

Getting Really-Reall-Really Tired of Stripes

The last stripe egg -- Hip-Hip-Hooray!!

Getting Tired of Stripes

My second-to-the-last stripe egg, with wax.

Decided to re-organize this blog so each egg has its own entry -- this means I'll have to edit some old posts, but it will be easier to track what I'm actually doing. I'll leave the nonspecific posts alone, but everything else is about to change.

(twenty minutes later) Hmmmmm . . . . this isn't working out quite as planned. Everything written on one day is combined into one post, which is not what I had intended. I could lie about the date to solve the problem, but I don't want to do that. There must be a solution to this . . . .

Ruined my favorite shirt today. I sat down for just a second to remove wax from an egg, and looked up three hours later only to discover purple dye all over my grey T-Shirt. Damn it, I loved this shirt! The neck was scooped without showing too much, the fit was perfect, and I loved how the color neutralized most of the unpleasant undertones in my skin. I guess I can dye it purple, but it will never be the same. At least I didn't dribble colored wax on my skirt.

Used Picasa to edit photos, and I'm impressed with how easy it is. I wish the "Blog This" button would upload more than one photo, but I'm impressed otherwise.

Flowers??? Mauve??? No way . . .

Very unusual egg -- it looks like it started life as mauve, and then someone (couldn't possibly have been me!) waxed flowers on it. Ugh. Next the entire egg was dunked in that pearlescent egg paint from Germany. This week I hit it with the magenta BloPen, and actually sort of liked the resulting texture and color. I liked it right up until I broke the damn thing, right before I took the picture. It only split into two pieces, so I was able to balance it long enough to take the photo. I love my tile floors, but they are hard on my art. I've lost two eggs to tile this week alone.

Sunny Side Up

Yellow egg, waxed, and hit with orange fabric BloPen. Isn't simplicity a wonderful thing?

Seeing Red

Nothing uch to write about here -- scarlet egg. Waxed. Vinegared. Dyed with child's coloring crystals inside a puppy training pad. Large portions still without color, so the egg spent additional time in shallow dye bath made from child's easter egg tablet and vinegar. Fin.

Clouds in My Coffee

I'm such a crybaby. They're eggs, for crying out loud. Not paintings, not rubies, not Marylin Monroe's sweater. Eggs. So shut up already!!!!!!!!!!

I want validation and reassurance, remember? Still not getting any. A friend with a strong artistic bent stopped by my house for a few minutes and saw my current eggs. His most significant comment is that I should be making great big paintings on canvas and selling them for a lot of money. (Sigh.) It's nice that he likes all my squiggles, don't get me wrong, but it would have been nicer if he could have bought into my vision.

Most days I'm happy being a maverick. I'm OK creating things no one else has thought of, making eggs like no one else's, not gaining any recognition or making a cent off my art. It's about creation, it's about color, it's about the alchemical magic caused by combining dye and wax and time. It's about being different, and being true to those differences.

Usually I'm OK with that. But right now I want to hear someone say "This is cool."