Hand Painted And Decorated Eggs At The Craft Market For MarketFriday

Today I went to visit the new craft market. This is a four day fair with a lot of artists and vendors selling all kinds of handmade things like:

• wooden art statues, carved keepsake boxes, spoons, crosses, plates, barrels, even furniture.
• handmade, crochet and embroidered table cloths,
• paintings on canvas and on eggshells,
• dry flower art,
• ceramics (plates, pots, mugs, carafes, fridge magnets etc.)
• flower decorations,
• folk costumes,
• handmade jewelry,
• handmade leather shoes, belts, bags,
• hand painted eggs,
• decorations made of straw,
• homemade jam, syrup, sweets, cheese, sausages, ham, bread, honey, gingerbread and so on, you name it.

These craft fairs are taking place three or four times a year and are the perfect place for me to take photos for #MarketFriday, hosted by my dear friend Denise. @dswigle. What you can see here is unique, handmade and really interesting. I spent almost two hours at the fair and took like 600 photos. I know, it's insane but at least I'll have plenty of photos to last till the next fair.

I was a bit disappointed as the last craft market was better than this one but still, I believe it was ok after all. Kitsch was minimal, but more than last year.

Today I was on the mission to buy hand painted eggs. We have some friends in Germany and have to send them some as you can't buy such eggs over there. I saw these eggs last year and knew the vendors will be here this year as well. Easter has passed but they are still bringing eggs to the market.

These eggs were the most beautiful I believe. For those of you who are not familiar with the process, these eggs are washed first, a small hole is made at one end of the egg, the interior of the egg is taken out, the egg is washed again, dried and then the decorating process can begin.

Look at that detailed and precise work. I don't know how can someone have so much patience to do such an amazing work. One egg costs around $2.5, which is ridiculously cheap considering the work that is done.

Eggs with different design, blue and green and you can see some pink in the upper right corner. On the left side of the photo there are wooden eggs, also hand painted. Those are more expensive though.

At the bottom of the photo you can see those colorful eggs decorated with small beads. Imagine the artist picking the small beads with a pair of forceps, one by one and gluing them to the egg.

Two giant ostrich eggs :) I love these as are rare. These are easier to decorate because of the size.

I found more than one vendor this time and was very happy to see such a variety of eggs.

There are three type of eggs here. The egg holder contains normal eggs painted by hand with different pattern each. This is not specific to this region, I believe they are from another region.

Pay attention to the little egg on the left side of the photo. It's dressed with small beads, sawed by hand. It's too much for me but I can appreciate the art in it as I have some experience working with these little beads.

In this basket you can see the dark designed eggs, those are hand painted with beeswax and dyed. It requires long hours of practice to do that. Some of you may remember, I did two posts, two attempts to decorate some eggs with beeswax, both failed.

This is new to me, I've never seen such egg decoration before.

This is a cropped photo so you can see it better. These are mostly flower decoration painted manually.

This is the highlight of the egg market :) These eggs are like lace. These are not only painted but cut out like lace. I have no idea how they can do that. Egg shells nowadays are so thin, you brake an egg easily while taking out of the fridge or bringing them home from the market.

I was amazed to see these beauties. One egg costs around $10 but I think it's way less than I would ask if I would be the artist. Maybe one day I'll ask these artists how many eggs have they broken in the process.

Here you can see some normal size eggs and two big ones, those are ostrich eggs. Ostrich eggs are very precious because it's easier to work on them. The eggshell is not so fragile and it's way bigger than a normal egg.

Here are some eggs, hanging on a branch. This is common during Easter, especially in Hungary but I've seen it here as well. In the background there are religious icons hand painted on wood.

This photo was taken the week before Easter in a local dairy shop. I liked the decoration, so I took the photo. Eggs hanging on pussy willows branches, as pussy willow is also a symbol of spring.

Look what I have here, more eggs :)

Please feel free to check out @dswigle's post and join the fun! Market Friday Goes to the Air Show - Part One.

If you like craft products and folk art, stay tuned, there's more to come. I'm going to post photos each Friday for the #MarketFriday challenge.