This year for Easter I decided to try some natural egg dying. After school yesterday Big B and I boiled up some eggs and started making our dyes. The first one we made was using red onion skins. We boiled the water, added a little vinegar, added the onion skins, and let them sit for a while.
Red Onion Skin Dye
Some of the other things we made dyes with included tea, coffee, chili powder, celery seed, beets, cranberry pomagranate juice, blueberries, and green tea.
How you may ask? Well we boiled our dyes and added vinegar. The longer the items boil and soak the stronger the color is suppose to turn out. The hibiscus flower dye didn’t turn out well, I guess it needs more flowers to make the color intense. I also didn’t like the pomagranate juice dye either, I think there was too much sugar and it wiped right off of the egg shell.
- Different shades of brown and yellow
The one’s that worked the best were coffee, tea, and paprika. They all had shades of brown, yellow, and even a slight orange tint.
- Blues, Greens, and Yellows
The blueberry were my favorite! I already had some blueberry/spinach puree made up from when I was experimenting with the Sneaky Chef recipes that worked out perfectly. The first batch of blueberry/spinach I made had a little more water so they came out a little more pale (on right). It’s hard to tell by the picture but the ones on the bottom left are actually a very pale pink. These were soaked in beet puree. The yellow ones in the middle were soaked in green tea. They came out even stronger when I left them in the fridge soaking in dye overnight.
- A Proud Boy With His Creations!
The most fun was seeing Big B search the pantry and the fridge for things to try to use for dye. He wanted to try the tops of strawberries and peanut butter. I’m not so sure those would have turned out well! Anyone can go buy a $1 box of egg dyes but it was a whole lot more fun to use natural items we already had.
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[…] Naturally dye your eggs. This one is actually a lot of fun and we’ve done it for a few years now. Skip the artificial dye and use vegetables and fruits to naturally dye your eggs. Looking for some vegetables and fruits that make pretty colors? Try blueberries, raspberries, carrots, spinach, purple cabbage, tumeric, and onion skins. Your kids will have fun experimenting with different items they find around the kitchen. […]