Tales of a Pysanky Virgin

Last year I was introduced to the Ukrainian art of egg decorating, Pysanky. Since our group didn't get together this year for obvious reasons, I thought I'd share the ones I made last year.  Note that even though I used the traditional methods to decorate my eggs, they are not an accurate representation of this traditional art form in the least.  Pysanky eggs are created by alternating applications of wax  drawn with a kistka and dipping the eggs in dyes going from lighter to darker colors, then warming the wax and wiping it off to reveal the whole design.

I thought traditional Pysanky eggs looked too intimidating.  I'm not good at symmetry or uniformity, so I went and did my own thing.

I will say, having looked very closely at more than a few eggs trying to figure out my failings, I was surprised to see a lot of "perfect" designs, had flaws.  I'm not saying this to knock the artists, nothing will make those eggs anything less than the incredible works of art that they are.  I'm pointing this out because it's easy to look at someone else's work and see nothing but perfection and then look at your own work and see nothing but the mistakes.  If you're an artist, I know, that's what you do, but knock it off.  If you try this, cut yourself some slack, have fun and roll with the mistakes.

I don't have enough knowledge to write a tutorial, and I couldn't do better than what's out there.  I don't even have enough experience to say what's a great source of information, everyone seems to have a slightly different way of doing things. If it's a site dedicated to Pysanky, and there are many out there, it's probably written by people that have been doing this for decades and it's as good as any for a place to start.

What I'm prepared to offer here is a few insights from a Pysanky virgin's point of view and a few examples of non-traditional eggs. For instructional purposes I will be pointing out all my mistakes.

This was my first egg.  The dying process was blue, then pink (making a purplish blue), then black.  You can see fingerprints (bottom pic, center is the most noticeable) where I accidently touched the egg bringing it out of the first dye.  Human skin is gross and oily.  Wash your hands thoroughly when handling eggs, even when cleaning the eggs to prep them.  Don't apply lotion or hand sanitizer to your hands they will leave a residue. Really try to handle them as little as possible. And have a paper towel handy when you lift the egg out of the dye so you don't have to grab it to keep it from falling.  And watch that you don't set the paper towel on fire with the candle flame you are using to heat your kistka.  I'll say that again because it's really important, don't set paper towels on fire, especially when doing the final wax removal.

After you heat the wax in the kistka, make a test mark on a scrap piece of paper.  If the wax doesn't flow, it might not be heated enough or the kistka might be clogged.  If it flows too fast, you'll be thankful that big blob is on your paper and not your egg.   Test again until it flows evenly.  Do this each and every time you heat the wax, because the one time you don't, you will ruin your egg and consequently you're entire existence. No you won't, just keep going and pretend you meant to do that and most people wont even notice. Also regardless how careful you are, you might still end up with an uncontrolled blob, this life. (Bottom pic, left upper corner, big blob that was not part of the design)  The people using electric kistkas didn't seem to have this problem, but again too limited exposure on my part to be making any definitive statements.

It's helpful to sketch a design on the egg with pencil.  The process of removing the wax usually also gets rid of most the pencil lines.  But you can see here the marks on my spider's eyes are still visible.

In my limited experience, it seemed in small areas or thin lines where there wasn't a lot of wax to remove, the pencil marks were more prominent. I also found it's best to draw very lightly with a regular pencil.  I love my mechanical pencils but it was hard to write lightly with them.  The rough shell against the thin lead, left a lot of graphite in it's wake.

No you can not wash or rub the marks off a dyed egg.  The dye will rub or wash off also.  If the pencil mark is on an area that's been left white you can carefully try to remove it, but you might muck up a dyed area in the process and ruin your whole day.  A lot of things about Pysanky can ruin your whole day, such as the fragile state of eggs in general.  It is still a worthwhile pursuit, that can be fun as well as rewarding.

Here I tried making a few highlights on my web by randomly picking lines to cover with wax before the egg was dyed.  Obviously it just looks stupid and I should have made the whole web red.  What I discovered later is there is a whole other method Dryapanky, where you dye the egg and then scratch off a design.  I think that would produce the highlights I was hoping for but I haven't had a chance to try.

I found that besides doing a rough sketch on paper, doing a rough sketch in color was very helpful in trying to figure out the order different elements of the design needed to be waxed.  In the sketch I started with a black outline and then added details.  In the dying process, black will be the last color so you have to work backwards.

The hardest part was the black lines for the eye.  Doing that in the negative was obviously really difficult for me.  I wish those lines were much bolder. Also since the cat and the outline of the eye  were the only black components, the rest of the egg needed to be covered in wax.  You can see all the places I missed.  I think it works with the design, but I learned later a trick for covering a large area is to tip the wax out of the top of the kistka and smear it around.

Both images are on opposite sides of the same egg.  The order of colors for dying was white, yellow, orange, red and black.

The skull egg below is my favorite and it's just one egg with three designs.  This is the top view. 

For this I sketched my skull drawings on paper and then used graphite paper to trace them onto the eggs. You can see a lot of graphite lines are still visible on the finish egg.  The skull's were covered in wax so they would stay white, although I really liked the look of the soot infused wax and kind of wished I could've kept them like that.  Then the egg was dyed yellow.  The flower details where hand painted with dye.  Yes, you can do that.  And then the flowers were covered in wax.  This time I used wispy strokes of wax to cover a large area on purpose, and that's how I achieve the look of the top and bottom of the egg.  Then the whole thing was dipped in black.  

If you like my little egg stand it's a gold Lego dish on top of a clear inverted radar dish.  Fancy.

This last egg was done pretty much the same as the skulls.  All the small details are hand painted.  Doing that may require multiple applications to get the saturation of color you want. The only two colors the egg was dipped were blue and then black. 

 Yes siree, spring is just bursting forth from this egg.  

The biggest thing I haven't figured out and was hoping to work on this year, is what to do about the insides.  Technically you don't have to empty the eggs.  Over time eggs will eventually dry out, unless they leak or explode.  Adds a level of excitement you weren't expecting right? I liked working with full eggs because they sink to the bottom of the dye and once the inside is dry you will have a fully intact egg.  I followed these guidlines and every single egg eventually went bad.  Luckily none exploded, they only had small leaks.  But small leaks can make big stinks.

The other option is to empty the egg, either before or after dying. There's pros and cons to both and then there's the issue of varnishing them, but I don't have experience in any of that

Or maybe I did find the best method of preservation, pictures.  Because you never have to worry about pictures exploding or leaking noxious gases.

Biohazard Tentacles

It appears I had one more biohazard egg mashup in me.  Hopefully this is last because quite frankly aside from being cathartic, I don't see the point.  I'm not actually going to send out Corona Easter cards or frame these on my wall. Also there are just too many possibilities, and I'm awful about making decisions.  Photoshop is like being at the eye doctor. "Which is better one or two?  One or two?" Which is why there is also the following version.  

The octopus is from the Biodiversity Heritage Library.   They have many lovely tentacally pictures.  

And there's this one, that's not even eggy or Eastery at all.  

Frame and corner scrolls are from the Graphics Fairy.

Coronavirus Flavored Easter Eggs

I'm still playing around with photoshop, inspired by the cloud of impending doom hanging overhead. If I seem flippant, I truly don't mean any disrespect.  Sarcasm and art are my coping mechanisms.  I also been watching "So bad, they're good" horror movies.  

Garden Party Massacre - It's utterly ridiculous, but in a fun way.

Killer Sofa - I admit this one isn't great, ok it's really hokey, but I love how sinister the recliner is. It's expressions are priceless, this deadpan menace that's kind of adorable, achieved with a couple of mere upholstery buttons.  Actually you can save a lot of time and just watch the trailer.  I really love the song during the end credits, that's worth a listen, You're Cold by Bernardo Rao.

Wacko - This is my favorite bad movie during the lockdown so far.  I can't believe I didn't see this on a rental VHS, like I saw most of my horror back in the day.  And I'm kind of glad I didn't, because I think I appreciated it more now than I would have then.  It came out in '82 and it's a spoof on the horror movies that came out prior.  So for an old fart like me it was a nostalgic laugh down memory lane.  Julia Duffy is wonderful.  I would watch it again just to see the delivery of her lines.  She carries that perfect level of seriousness that's needed to balance the absurd context around her. The running pervy dad joke is wrong, but it comes up so often you find yourself reciting along like an audience participation film.  

Back to our regularly scheduled program, I can't decide which version I like better Corona Egg in Angry Red or Puke Pastel and either with or without a framed border.  Here they all are for your viewing pleasure.

My interpretation of the coronavirus is actually a picture of a Sundew leaf, again from the wonderful pictures made available by the British Library. 

Easter Pestilence

This is what my brain spits out when Easter coincides with a pandemic.  I think this would make a nice commemorative 2020 Creepster Easter card.   This year I imagine the Easter Bunny will be wearing a biohazard suit and giving out hand sanitizer.  Just kidding, he'll be practicing social distancing like a good rabbit and not even the Easter Bunny can get his paws on hand sanitizer.  

Flowers found on flickr courtesy of the British Library.

Zombie Jesus & Bunny Brains

Not that I was trying to make good on my threat to do Easter in July, but my little buddy here didn't get finished until after Easter and then summer showed up and if I don't post about him now, I'll forget by next Easter.

Since we're talking about Easter, I finally got around to watching the second season of Happy! and it is to Easter what season one was to Christmas.  It is so wrong, and bound to become a Creepster holiday classic.  It's Rated TV WTF: Weird Situations, Tasteful Nudity, F***ed Up Bunnies, Viewer Discretion Is Advised.  And the trailer below, it's a bit graphic, so you know, probably don't watch it if you have kiddies or co-workers around.

I know that no amount of palm weaving tutorials are going to keep me from going to hell and I'm ok with that.  I grew up in a very Catholic family, which as you can probably tell, has had some influence on my art. As a kid I accepted all that was Easter, from the resurrection of Christ to the magical rabbit that hid eggs and put treats in baskets.  As an adult, I'm just in awe that we celebrated all that crazy wrapped up in one holiday without anyone batting an eye.

As tribute to the holiday mash up of my childhood,

 I offer Zombie Jesus Eating Bunny Brains.

I don't really do tutorials on felting, once the stabbing starts it's hard to stop and take pictures. But I'll run through the basics on the off chance it gives someone ideas of their own.  For reference Zombie Jesus is about 8cm tall.  He started out as a white oblong sphere.  I added a layer of zombie green over the top for his head.

Zombie green is a mix of olive, sage, green, evergreen, or whatever else I feel like throwing in.  Except for black and white, I rarely ever use just one color of wool.  The red robe, brown hair, pink brain are all a mix of at least three different shades.  Even the bunny is a mix of yellow and white.

Because A) I like to think it looks more interesting, B) I like buying multi color sample packs from local vendors, so I have small amounts of lots of colors C) It takes a lot longer to run out of specific colors and D) When I do run out of a color, I never worry about having to buy an exact match.

The robe I added in sections.  This would be easier to explain in pictures, but I'll give it a shot.  When I want a thick straight edge, such as the bottom and sides of his robe, I lay down some wool flat and give it a few shallow pokes to set the fibers.  Then I fold over an edge and give it some more shallow pokes. Shallow pokes because you are trying not to poke the fibers all the way through.  It can't be helped completely and that's why it'll need to be flipped, given a few more pokes and then flipped back again, more pokes.  At this point you can set it on your object and poke with abandon to attach it.  I just did this for the sides of the robe and filled in the rest by laying wool directly on his little body.

The white washed Christ of my youth always had burgundy robes and long brown hair. A friend let me raid her stash of Merino wool for his luxurious locks.  Merino has a smoother shaft, and I like it for fur or hair.  

This video shows how to layer wool for long fur.  It's pretty close to what I did  except I did way too many rows, too close together.  I wish I had taken a picture so you could see what Zombie Jesus looked like when he had big beauty pageant hair.  

It was pretty easy to fix, I ran an eyebrow comb repeatedly through his hair to thin it out.  The tines on the eyebrow comb are fine enough to grab the wool, I just had to be careful to thin it out evenly and not pull out any big sections. Then I gave him a haircut with cuticle scissors, which have never even seen a cuticle, but I love them for needle felting.  

The following is a quick and dirty brain felting technique that I came up with on the fly.  Sometimes I get a little too caught up in the details and I did not want to stress over proper placement of brain ridges on this teeny tiny brain.  This method enabled me to avoid the part of my brain that makes me mental.

I imagine the first part of this process is similar to spinning wool into yarn. That is if you were to ignore all the time tested techniques that result in a strong uniform yarn.  Like I said, quick and dirty.

Step 1:  Lay wool fibers out in a line and roll back and forth until you have some that resembles a loose string.  Add more fibers to the ends to make it longer, add more fibers to the entire length to make it thicker.  I use some pretty hi-tech equipment for this, namely my hand and my thigh.  Also wearing pants helps the process.  That's right, in a seated position I roll the wool up and down the top of my thigh.  Pants provide a grippy surface to work the wool against.

Step 2:  Once the fibers are matted enough that the string isn't going to fall apart, start twisting it one direction.  Twist tightly enough that it twists up on itself.  To tame all the loose fuzzies you will have to do this a few times, stretching out the string and twisting it tighter. If you want it really smooth you can dip it in soapy water and then twist, essentially wet felting it.  If you decide to get it wet, make sure it's completely dry before moving to the next step.

Step 3:  Spread out the brain matter and lay a bit of darker wool over it.  Poke it a couple of times to tack it to the brain.

Step 4: Roll the brain matter into a little brain ball around the darker wool.  Poke it a few more times so the brain ball stays together.  Then poke it a couple more times, just for the shear joy of stabbing a brain ball.

This bunny was kind of a pain.  I feel it's a bit too large in proportion to Zombie Jesus, but still small enough to give me a headache.  His dastardly tiny limbs and ear were difficult to needle felt without stabbing through the other side or my fingers.  After I needle felted them into the general size and shape, I dipped them in soapy water and rolled (limbs) and pressed (ear) to wet felt them.  This gave them structural strength without drawing too much blood.  

[Note: All crafts require a blood sacrifice, as demanded by the gods.  Some, such as needle felting, just require more than others.]

After the bunny was assembled I used my trusty cuticle scissors to cut open his little head, partly insert the brain and then stab it into place. A fine needle was used to poke in any stray dark red fibers and then some bunny flesh was built up around the brain.  After all my careful work my brain still wasn't perfect, there was a low spot.  That was easily filled with a little tiny ball of pink and no one is the wiser, except for us of course.

Is it just me or from this angle does it look like Zombie Jesus is breastfeeding a dead bunny?  Maybe he just likes to slow dance with his food.  Anyway, the final touches were to add a face to the bunny and arms so Zombie Jesus could hold his feast.

Of course none of this helps me understand why a rabbit would decorate eggs. But I think I figured out how the Easter Bunny manages to fill all those baskets in one night.  I mean Santa gets magical flying reindeer and a sleigh to carry everything while the Easter Bunny has to hop the whole way and doesn't even have opposable thumbs. But Jesus is just a baby on Christmas Eve, he doesn't even have his super powers to turn water into wine yet, so Santa needs all that extra gear.  On the other hand by Easter, Jesus is an able bodied zombie and he can totally give the Easter Bunny a hand.  Not only that, but by then he has his super powers, and they probably only have to carry one basket of goodies and just duplicate it fish and bread style.

Now that I understand it all, I feel a little bad about having Zombie Jesus eat a bunny brain.  But he looks so cute eating his little bunny brain.  

Creepster Easter Felting

I realize I'm running late on the  Easter posts, but Easter starting it by being late this year.  Truth be told, I still have a few Easter or Creepster projects to finish so don't judge.  Or judge, I don't really care, it's my blog and if I want to do Easter in July, I will.

My first contribution is Bunny Cthulhu, isn't he adorable?  

I really like needle felting, it doesn't take a whole lot to get started, a felting needle, some wool roving, a surface to felt on and the desire to do a lot of stabbing.

They make brush mats for felting or you can use foam. I bought an inexpensive upholstery foam remnant from Joann.  My local store has a bin in the back full of remnants.  The piece I got was big enough to cut into plenty good sized blocks to share when I have friends over.  The three inch thickness is probably overkill, but I like it.  Most blocks sold specifically for felting seem to be 2 inches.

I started out with a single needle a friend gave me.  That's how they get you addicted you know.  It just takes one needle.  And I did a lot with that one needle, but needles dull or break and it is useful to have different sizes and types.  I have a set like this that I really like.

My experience in buying wool roving is limited to local craft stores and farmers markets.  The chain stores all carry the same stuff.  Literally the same exact product, just with their store brand on the packaging.  Yorkshire Rose Farm is a vendor at one our local markets and they always have a wide variety of colors and wools, including curly locks.  The one mistake I've made is accidentally buying Merino wool.  It's very smooth and silky so it's better for welt felting than needle felting, but it can also be used for hair/fur.  There's ton's of info on all the different breeds and how the different wools felt up but I've found Romney seems to be the most readily available for needle felting.

For wet felting all I use is bubble wrap and a dish towel. I don't do a lot of wet felting but it's useful for thin pieces.  Since I just make small embellishments I start with needle felting to set the fibers in place before wet felting.  I believe any type of wool can be wet felted.

The best part of needle felting is all the stabbing.  Occasionally I have friends over for Stabby Night, it's very therapeutic.  Now kids, you shouldn't drink and stab, but we do.  That's also why I keep band aids and Neosporin in my stabby kit.

Unfortunately the worst part of needle felting is also all the stabbing.  There comes a point where all the angst leaves your body and your hand starts to cramp.  It does help to only stab as deep as necessary.  If you stab through your project and push the fibers out the other side, you then have to stab them back in, which is just more work. Only stab with the barbed part of the needle, going deeper doesn't get you anything, except maybe hand cramps.  

I also want to give a shout out to a club that just opened up this year, Crucible.  They host a wide variety of events that you are not going to find at your local sports bar.  Every Sunday afternoon it's Dark Arts & Crafts (and Games).  There's no cover and you can bring projects to work on or play games.  I love that a club supports us crafty folks by offering up their space so we can carry out our craft addictions.  As much as I love hosting Stabby Nights, having a place to meet up with friends is pretty wonderful too and it's because of Dark Arts & Crafts that I got these two projects done.

I would have more felting done, but my friend sidetracked me with Pysanky eggs (that'll be another post).  She got quite a few of us addicted and the Crucible has been very supportive of our large group of egg people and helping us get enough tables to set up.  I can't say enough how awesome they are.

It's hard to take pictures of the felting process, because the urge to just keep stabbing is so great.  My first felting post, and my zombie bunny felting one have a little more info on felting.  The Bunny Cthulhu basics are as follows:

• two balls one for the head, one for the body
• two wings,  first needle felted for general shape, then wet felted, then needle felted to polish the edges and add detail
• two ears, basically the same as wings with less detail work
• five tentacles that started out as three logs, alternating needle stabbing with rolling them like clay to shape them, cut the logs in half, the sixth piece can be used as an appendage on something else

Attach the head to body by adding some loose wool between the two and stabbing.  Attach the tentacles by layering loose wool, the cut end of the tentacles, and more loose wool onto the face.  Stab the loose wool into a pleasing (or nightmarish) shape around the tentacles to hold in place.  Stab in details with small balls of felt such as black soulless eyes or dark pink beauty marks.

A couple years ago I felted a few creepy eggs, one of which was an eyeball.  I wanted to make another one, just a little bit fancier this time.

See flowers, that's fancy right?  

It's not very egg shaped from the sides because of how I built up the eyelids.  

The vines are made by rolling small amounts of wool roving into tiny strands before felting them on.  You can keep adding more wool overlapping the ends to make the vines as long as you'd like.  I roll the wool down the top of my thigh. I like wearing jeans or pants with a bit of texture for this.  If you want tighter vines get them wet with soapy water and then roll and twist.  Either way, always work in the same direction.  The flowers are little balls, the leaves are little mice turd shaped rolls.  Using a finer felting needle for these details helps a lot.  

Couldn't resist asking my favorite zombie hand to model my new eyeball egg.  

Woven Palm Creations

A little bit belated Easter, a little bit belated Mother's Day, this post is for my mom.  I gave a bunch of palm weavings to her and she's been passing them on to her friends and they've been asking questions about how they were created.  Hopefully I'll answer those questions.

If you've been following along the last few years you'll know that once a year I take a break from creepy crafts to do some palm weaving.  If you are here for the palm weaving, you might not want to stray too far. This blog is filled with things and some of those things have sharp teeth and tentacles.  You have been warned.

This year I played around with all the things I've learned how to make so far. I'm not really sure what the Catholic Church's stance is on hot glue, but that's what I used for the most part to put things together.

The weaving above consists of a rustic plait base (all that's visible of it are the two ends sticking out the top), also at the top are two rustic plaits with loops, following down are some roses, star flowers with rose centers, a couple of braids and a decorative sprig (see note at the end of star flower tutorial). 

I made a lot of small roses this year with this technique, using strips of palm that were about 0.5 inch/ 1 cm in width.  Depending on the length of the palm and size of rose, I could make 1-3 roses out of one strip.  If I ended the rose mid-palm, I would cut the palm and wrap the end around the "stem".  Holding it tightly I would fold a piece of painters tape over it.  If the rose used up the strip all the way to the end I would wrap and then tuck the end.  If there was enough leftover I'd make little loops and finish up again by folding tape over the top and bottom.

The reason for all the tape is to keep the rose intact as it dries.  The palm shrinks as it dries so if you just secure the ends the rose coils will lose tension, not that it's a bad look.  If you want the coils to stay tighter and remain flatter though it needs to dry that way.  Both flowers on the left started out relatively the same.  The one on the far left was just secured at the stem and the other was secured flat with tape.

For these I used the roses and bundled scrap pieces to decorate crown of thorns. 

Slight variation, with ribbon.

The crosses were made using this technique. If that video goes a bit too fast, this shows the same basic cross, without the added loops on the cross bars.  The ones on the ends have this type of braid and the center one uses this rustic plait which I've added loops into the weave.  Each cross contains two separate braids, the joins are hidden by the roses.  

For these I hit my stash of dried leaves and flowers.  

The pressed wine & roses weigela flowers are layered 

with a small cross on top and a larger one underneath. 

More crosses, wispy strands bundled and pressed dry, with small roses.

A few more crosses, a bit simpler.  The one on the left is two crosses layered. 

Still more crosses, playing with different styles.  

This last one is just a small rogue bouquet, with a 

bundle of wisps, a couple of braids and a single rose.  

Whether you are one of the curious that actually received one of these or you just stumbled in off the internet I hope this was at least somewhat useful in your future palm weaving endeavors.