File: TTFeatureEGGS04022015 --- [Music] Beeswax, candles and different color dyes - all you need to transform a plain white egg into a work of art. Toronto folk arts organization Kusa Collective hosted seven workshops where friends families and couples around Toronto gather together to decorate their Ukrainian Easter eggs. It's called pysanky. The word came from pisantha. It means to write. Designs are drawn on the eggs in the Asian Ukrainian technique. First choose a design. A lot of Ukrainian patterns are geometric and one of the instructors says there is something unique about it. "Ukranians definitely have the most detailed patterns and I think that's something that's also just been developed here. Like people in Ukraine don't even know sometimes." Once you have picked out your design, draw it on the egg with a hot wax pen called kiska. You have to hit the head of it in the flame of the candle until the wax is melted. Using the wax protects the eggshell and keeps the pattern in shape. Next you need to color the egg by dipping it into dyes. When it dries you can add more lines with wax. These additional lines will be kept under the wax in the color shade you choose. You can work through many different dyes but it has to be from light colors to the darkest. In the final stage you heat the egg next to the flame to melt the wax off. Then your delicate design will appear. This syria workshop costs $25 but it offers an opportunity to experience the taste of Eastern European art. "It's interesting and anybody can be a part of it. Doesn't matter if you're you're Ukrainian or not. So, that's fun I guess." These pisenka workshop is one of several events that teach different Ukrainian art forms. For the Kusa Collective members it is more than just art. They say it is about bringing communities together to share Ukrainian culture. Kusa collective is composed of six ladies of Ukrainian heritage. It all started in 2010 when they found their common interests in folk art and revitalizing culture crafts they had lost touch with. It's possible to preserve and practice any culture in a diverse city like Toronto, but they say they still don't want to see their grounded tradition fade away under the pressures of the fast pace of life today. "It's something that reminds me of home and that i'm very comfortable with and it connects me to others. So yeah I've been working alongside Kusa collective for a while and now we work together." And there are some who restored the past memories thanks to the pysanky workshop. "This is my culture. Being Ukrainian I've never done this in my life and it's an opportunity to try something that goes way back in my heritage." Olenka even said there were certain moments where she could see the culture being preserved. "And so through these workshops I've seen a lot of people who already know how to make pysanky. They tend to be people of families who have been in Canada or the US for a few generations and then there are some people who come like those two women from tednap region in Ukraine. They came last week and it was the first time they made a pysanky. They heard about it and they knew people, elderly people in their village who knew how to make them but they didn't know how to make it because they didn't have that available to them back home. So there in a way is a certain revival." But it doesn't stop here. The royal pysanky reaches out to help others in need. Because pysanky are just such a sacred beautiful thing that it seems like that's just like the right thing. You're making this beautiful thing at Easter. It's always been like a prayer and you should give it to somebody or do something special with it. It's not like just any old craft. It's kind of special. So the idea was to still do it for charity, um to bring people together in this way." They have donated around two thousand dollars each year for four years. They haven't decided where to donate this year's money, but it will be either a rehabilitation center or scholarship program. I'm Jenna Yoon, Ryerson TV News.