Day 44: April 28, 2016 - Decorating Easter Eggs with Easter Egg Sleeves

It is this time of year that you can look around and tell who the Orthodox people are by the red stains on their fingers from the red dyes used to colour the eggs.  Other groups may choose different colours for their eggs, but ours are red.  Once in a while it is nice to add a little variety to our red eggs, and this year, we found a lovely way to do just that.

While walking through the grocery store, we saw on the rack all the envelopes of egg dye packets.  The store offered multiple colours, including red, blue, green, and yellow.  Right next to the colour packets was another set of packages that instantly caught our attention.  They were egg wrappers.  Not like egg roll wrappers, but decorative sleeves to put on the boiled eggs.  There were several themes of wrappers.  For us, it is important to keep Christ in Pascha, so we chose the religious themes.  We were so fascinated with the selection, and decided to try two packets to see how the eggs looked.  Each packet cost $1.49 (Canadian), which we thought was a worthwhile investment.

The egg wrapper packets that we bought were Biblical themed and Icons themed.  We thought those were the best choices for our needs.  Other themes included Children, Animals, Flowers, and Traditional.  They are a Ukranian company which claims, "As long as egg decorating continues, the world will exist." That was such a lovely thought that we wanted to be a part of keeping the world existence.

These were very easy to use.  First, you open the package and see the sheet of sleeves.  There is some work involved in cutting the strip of seven sleeves into the individual pieces.  You have to be really neat in your cutting skills, and for us, it was hard to identify the exact line where one started and the other stopped.  But, do the best you can with cutting.

Once the sleeves are cut and you have seven individual pictures, open each one to make a cylinder.  The cylinder is surprisingly spacious.   You put the egg into the middle of the sleeve (the opening).  The plastic sleeve looks too big for the egg, but the next step takes care of that.

Using a slotted spoon, dip each egg, one by one, into a pot of boiling water.  The egg should stay in the water for 5-10 seconds, or, long enough for the plastic to shrink and seal against the egg.  You don't want to leave the egg in the boiling water for too long, since it is already cooked inside -- you don't want to overcook the egg.

Remove the egg from the boiling water, and set it aside to dry for a moment.  Then, you are done.  We started this process with our red-dyed eggs, but the dye bled into the boiling water, and made the tips a light pink (as in the pictures).  That was okay this time, but we  believe that using a plain, white boiled egg would be more practical.  Also, we noticed that the red colour came through some of the pictures, which took away from the beauty of the sleeve.  The details of the pictures is impressive, and we were pleased with how the plastic stuck to the egg.

The Pysanka Egg Sleeve was extremely easy to use.  They offered a  lovely alternative to our traditional red eggs.  Now, we have to wait until Sunday to see if we can win the Cracking Game with one of these eggs!

Holy Thursday of Holy Week at Archangel Michael Greek Orthodox Church in Campbell, OhioSource of video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3BgCS787JE