LENOX, Mass. — Ventfort Hall celebrates Easter with egg decorating classes. Tjasa Sprague teaches them. She learned techniques from her Czechoslovakian mother and grew up decorating eggs to give to her friends and family.

“March, April, the spring never comes fast enough, it’s a great annual occupation and what you do with the eggs is at Easter, you give them to each other so various members of the family make their own and then you trade,” Tjasa Sprague said.

Tjasa is from Slovenia. Her classes put a different spin on a traditional Ukrainian way of decorating some people may be familiar with. 

“In those days the young farmers, peasants, whoever, would make extra pin money by making these decorated Easter eggs." Tjasa said, "The ones people are familiar with are the Ukrainian ones, but I call it Slavic because I don’t use all the very elaborate Ukrainian designs. They have really perfected it to a degree we just kind of doodle on the eggs here.”

Tjasa invited us into her home to learn how to “doodle” on eggs. 

To start you have to take a pen and melt wax to draw on the raw egg. This tradition goes back to times when materials like this weren’t always available.

“Over the years… there wasn’t such a thing available in those days. We actually used to do it with drafting pens because what this is a little cup and you put the wax inside and the old-fashioned drafting pens used India ink the same way, so now it’s easier to do it this way,” said Tsaja.

Tjasa started when she was about 7 years old and has loved showing people how fun it can be and keeping her family tradition alive.

The wax is made to go on before dyeing to keep the design on the egg. After dyeing, you can keep adding wax to have different colored designs.

Tjasa then blows out the eggs and encourages you to melt off and wipe the wax.

Once the wax is gone, you carefully tie a ribbon through the shell and make a bow to hang from anywhere you like.