She leaned towards handcrafts from an early age, and although her native Prague did not offer traditional crafts in a lively form, she still found her way to them. Specifically through annual markets that were often held in the center of Prague during her youth. Here she encountered intricately decorated Easter eggs, offered for sale by craftspeople from Moravia and Slovakia. As she herself says, it was love at first sight – she especially fell in love with scratched and straw-adorned eggs. After completing her university studies in Žilina, she settled in Slovakia. Her love for Easter eggs accompanied her alongside her job, until she decided to transition from admiration to active creation. She enjoyed attending Easter egg exhibitions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, where she learned about the nuances of decorating through scratching and straw application from master crafters. Although the master crafters were not always willing to reveal everything, after years she eventually reached a stage where she became satisfied with her creations and intensified her production. As part of expanding her knowledge of decorating techniques, she completed a course on decorating Easter eggs at the Folk Art Production Center with the mistress Oľga Obertová. From her, she learned about coloring eggs with aniline dyes, as she had previously used ink and acrylic paints which did not dye the egg evenly. She particularly prefers dark tones – black, dark blue, and brown, in which the paleness of the straw and scratched patterns stand out. She doesn’t color the straw; she enjoys its natural tones, which differ in species (oats, barley) as well as ripeness. She processes the straw to make it soft, pliable, and easily adherent to the egg. She uses an ancient method, passed down from generation to generation. She soaks the straw in water, cuts it in half, and then removes the pith from the inner side with scissors. This process is also known as “ironing,” although it does not involve the traditional ironing with an iron (which is used for shaping straw in pictures). Under the iron, the straw hardens and evens out, which is not the goal when applying straw to eggs. When designing scratched and straw-coated eggs, she draws inspiration from the patterns of old Easter egg crafters, literature, and traditional embroidery, among others. In contrast to traditional methods, where the patterns on straw-coated eggs were composed of sharper geometric shapes, particularly rhombuses, she introduced more rounded shapes into her work. She achieves them with leather stamps, primarily in the form of crescents, circles, and tear drops. In the end, she mainly creates hearts and flowers based on patterns rooted in traditional attire. She usually plans out the pattern before picking up the egg, often sketching it on paper. However, working on an Easter egg is creative, so she often adjusts the result in detail to fit the specific egg. In addition to hen’s eggs, Ivana Veneniová has experimented with almost all types of eggs available in our market, from quail and pigeon to ostrich eggs. Creating Easter eggs from them has been her lifelong hobby. She works on them year-round, but does not focus on quantity, rather a little bit every day. The desire to create is fueled by the beauty of Easter eggs themselves and the feeling that she can always improve. She mainly gets inspiration from joint exhibitions of craftswomen. The fulfillment and at the same time the greatest reward for her is when a well-liked Easter egg comes from her hands.