Thursday, April 9, 2009

Easter Eggs - How To Naturally Dye



Dyeing Easter Eggs with natural ingredients is easy and fun! We have been doing this for a couple of years and the results are always suprising and beautiful.


What you need:
1. Large pot to boil eggs
2. Water
3. 2 dozen eggs
4. 6 bowls
5. vinegar
6. onion skins
7. red cabbage
8. tumeric powder
9. beets
10. copper granules (www.griffindyeworks.com)
11. blueberries or blackberries

Boil the eggs in water for at least 20 minutes. If cracking starts to occur, stop boiling. Boil # 6-11, each separately in a small pot of water for 5-10 min. each. Pour into bowls. Add 1 tblsp. vinegar and gently mix with a spoon. You can keep pieces of berries, beets and onion skins in the bowls along with the water for added color.

Place 4 eggs in each of the bowls and let sit for 15 min. Check and see how much color is absorbed. Leave eggs in longer (you can even leave them overnight) and observe if the color changes. Rinse in cool water. Gently rub a tiny bit of olive oil or other oil on each egg for shine (optional).

If the copper doesn't turn green right away, add a spinkle of tumeric. Berries will turn eggs anywhere from pink to blue to purple. Beets will turn eggs pink, purple, red or brown. Cabbage is a vibrant blue! Onion skins are orange/tan. Tumeric is a vibrant yellow. You can also try blending colors, draw on eggs with white crayon before dyeing to add designs, or dye eggs 1/2 and 1/2 in the colors using a spoon or egg dipper.

9 comments:

Joy said...

We're planning to do this tomorrow, IF I can find white eggs. Most natural eggs around here are brown so I'm off in a few minutes on a white egg hunt. We're just doing red cabbage, beets and turmeric though. :)

Lisa said...

We were saving this for tomorrow or Sat. I'm so glad you shared this today, I was hoping that you would. I think we might try the Osage orange roots since you passed that on to me.

Unknown said...

We've never dyed with natural dyes other then onion skins. I like to do those with fern or other leaves wrapped in to make imprints. They are so pretty. Will try this out this weekend! Thanks for sharing :)

MamaWestWind said...

The eggs came out so beautiful! I have to try this!

Tammy said...

Those are just BEAUTIFUL.

The Scolari House said...

Thanks for posting this! Tampa and I are dying eggs this morning. I have all the ingredients, I just wasn't sure how much to use until I saw your blog! Yours are gorgeous! I'll post mine sometime this week.

Mama Rose said...

You're eggs are quite beautiful! We're on this today...boiling eggs right now as a matter of fact. I'm so glad I read this today, because I never knew that about the oil. Thanks for sharing and "Happy Easter" to you and your family!

Anonymous said...

I love the array of soft "earthy" colours. Beautiful

Crescent Moon said...

I love the blue eggs! I didn't know that was possible with natural dye. I'll have to try that next year.