My great-aunt Jean has never claimed to be a professional artist. But to me, she might as well be. Since long before I was born, she has filled my family’s empty walls and nursery corners with whimsical paintings. To her, these pieces have been a way to show her family how much she loves them. To me, her paintings are windows into my childhood.

Her first piece was of colorful clowns, and it hung in my mom’s nursery in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her largest was a castle mural in my playroom. And Jean’s smallest paintings make their appearance in all of my family members’ houses every spring: hand-painted wooden Easter eggs.

While Jean painted her first egg for my mom a few years before I was born, the eggs didn’t become part of Prewitt family tradition until I came along. As my birthday always falls near Easter, my mom had asked Jean to paint themed eggs as party favors. A farm animal egg for my backyard petting zoo, a swimsuit egg for my indoor pool party, a princess egg for the year Cinderella visited my house: Each celebration meant guests went home with an on-theme work of art.

As Jean welcomed more great-nieces and -nephews, she started painting an egg for each of us every spring—and occasionally, all of the adults too. Some years, the eggs corresponded with our interests. Other years, there was a universal design. But for Jean, her love of bright acrylic colors, Easter, and sunshine brought consistency to the tiny illustrations.

“I loved giving what I had to give to y’all in that way,” she reminded me recently. “It was just an expression of the joy y’all bring to me.”

As it turns out, my family isn’t the only one with collections of hand-painted eggs. For Gret Mackintosh, an artist based in Charleston, South Carolina, her childhood was also dotted with these miniature designs. Growing up in Burlington, North Carolina, she received an egg every year in her Easter basket from her mom, almost all of them painted by the Burlington-based artist Bonnie Stout.

This is Stout’s fortieth year painting eggs for customers, and Mackintosh’s mom is still a loyal buyer. Aside from the standard designs that guide her eggs for newborns and graduations, each of Stout’s orders is entirely customized. She paints between 150 and 175 eggs per year, not including the 15 she currently has on the docket for her family members.

Mackintosh recently sent Stout a picture of her collection lined up, which she referred to as “her life in eggs.” When you look at some of Mackintosh’s favorite eggs, they really do recall special experiences. Her 1997 egg depicts a rainforest to commemorate her trip to Ecuador, and her 2001 egg reminds Mackintosh of studying abroad in Prague. And while the events of each year may vary, Stout has a way of making her eggs cohesive. In every scene, she casts her subject as a bunny.

Some of Gret Mackintosh’s favorite hand-painted Easter eggs by artist Bonnie Stout.

“You can kind of see over the forty years how [Stout’s] evolved as an artist,” Mackintosh says, “but they’ve always been kind of the same type of cartoony-looking, Bonnie-style brown bunny in the setting of whatever my mom has sent her information on.”

The tradition of painted eggs extends to other parts of the country as well. First ladies, in fact, have been receiving annual Commemorative Eggs for more than four decades. For the 1977 White House Easter Egg Roll, the American Egg Board, representing America’s egg farmers, presented the first Commemorative Egg to Amy Carter and her mom, First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

First Lady’s Commemorative Eggs over the years.

In the years following, first ladies received personalized eggs, formally establishing the First Lady’s Commemorative Egg as a tradition. The eggs have been crafted by different artists throughout history and vary in presentation, from carved eggs to jewel boxes. While each is stylistically unique, the eggs often take inspiration from the causes important to the First Lady.

Mackintosh and her four siblings stopped receiving new eggs when they got married. Instead, they were each given their entire collection in their childhood Easter basket; Mackintosh now decorates her home with her eggs in the spring. These days, the ten grandchildren of the family, including her son, have their own growing collections, with new eggs gifted each year by their grandmother.

This year, I suppose I was given my last egg, too. I got married in August and, just last week, received a surprise package in the mail from Jean. Inside was a pastel-green egg with my husband’s name painted on the back: his first egg, and probably my favorite yet.

The author’s husband’s first hand-painted Easter egg.