Easter Eggs

Just for fun this year, I decided to use natural elements to dye our Easter eggs. I read about it last year and filed the idea away in my brain for later recovery. Thankfully, I remembered! A quick internet search was all it took to get lots of ideas on what to do. Basically, you take the ingredient you want to use and combine it with eggs, water and a bit of vinegar and bring it to a boil. Boil it for 10-15 minutes, remove from the heat and then let the eggs soak in the solution. Some things required longer soaking than others, and it depends on how deep you want the color, too. I was surprised by some of the colors and others did just what I expected. I used coffee, sweet onion/shallot skins, spinach, mixed berries, red cabbage, red cabbage with baking soda, carrots, and turmeric.

Here they are labeled with their dye ingredients.

I was very hopeful that the egg I dyed with cabbage and baking soda would take on the color of the dye, but it didn't. From a deep purple with just the cabbage, it transformed into a brilliant teal with the addition of baking soda. I was shocked at how rich the color was on the onion skin eggs, though! And disappointed the spinach and carrot eggs didn't take on much color at all, even after an overnight soak.

At any rate it was fun experimenting!