Eggs Aren’t Always for Easter

We’ve connected with the English speaking community through the Lutheran Church. We went to a wine-tasting through one of the groups. Jan has gone to a couple of women’s events and is making friends. When she was in Romania eight years ago, she brought back beautifully hand painted eggs. They are typical of Eastern European crafts but Romania is the only country still painting and selling all year round. The other countries only sell them around Easter. Jan’s women’s group met with an egg painter, who demonstrated, then taught the group how to decorate.

The artist uses a “paint brush” that her husband makes by wrapping stiff copper wire around the end of a stick with a 1/4” sticking through the whole at the end. She dips the stick into melted wax and paints on the egg shell.

She usually starts with black wax, melted in a red tin cup, sitting in a can with a light bulb in it to melt the wax. She has a fine “brush” and a thicker “brush”. After the demonstration, Jan got to try her hand.

Tada!! The one I did is the white egg on the left.

We learned that it takes almost 1 hour to make an egg. She paints 30 with the black wax, then melts a different color and fills in some in that color and continues until the egg is done. The red egg is died red (important egg color in Romania) and then painted with white wax. She and her husband live off of her pension of 400 Lei/month (about $133) plus the money they make from selling the eggs. The eggs that I bought (traditional chicken size) was only 10 Lei. So she makes about $3.33/hour.