It's kind of like opening a present. You're not really sure what you're going to get, and you really can't see it until the wax is off. Decorating the eggs can be an extremely intricate process. Designs can be drawn lightly with a pencil, then traced over with the wax stylus. Each line has significance, explained Joanne.
Colors have meaning as well.
White symbolizes purity. Yellow is wisdom, and blue is for good health. It takes Joanne anywhere from 20 minutes to 14 or more hours to decorate and dye an egg, depending on the size of the egg and complexity of the design. Sometimes when she starts, Joanne can't put an egg down, or she'd lose her place. She admits her first attempts, nearly 30 years ago, were pretty bad.