Natural dyed easter eggs are fun. Use non-toxic natural dyes--two easy ones are onion skins and cochineal (dead bugs, sorry). What makes this a super project is to pick bits of edible weeds (dandelions for example) and use scraps of old nylons to hold the leaves against the eggs. Here are the steps.
Obtain your dyestuffs. Only use non-toxic natural dyes.
Collect old pantyhose or knee-hi's and also some twist-ties.
Get a couple of pots the right size for the number of eggs you are planning to dye. The eggs can be raw because they will be hardboiled in the dye bath.
On the day, go out with the children and hunt leaves. You need to know your local edible weeds, but of course I'm sure you do
and if you don't get a book from the library.
Put the dyestuffs you've chosen into water in the pots and start cooking. The more dyestuff, the darker the color. A tablespoon of cochineal will produce a huge amount of dye, several handfuls of onion skins should be enough for a fair-sized pot (2 quarts).
While the water is getting to the boil, help the children to press the leaves against the eggs and wrap them in the nylons, using twist-ties to hold them tight.
When the dye-baths are looking fairly rich, reduce the heat to avoid cracking the eggs and gently slide them into the water. Then raise the heat enough to cook them, time them for hard-boiled eggs and voila. The results are really gorgeous. You can also do the thing where you turn off the water after a little bit of boiling and let the eggs sit in the gradually cooling water to finish cooking.
It is a good many years since I did this and I can't remember the other dyes we used. Maybe dandelion greens? A lot of plants will dye eggs yellow. Onion skins do a warm brownish yellow, but with the leaf patterns it is quite lovely. Cochineal produces a purple-red. It is a safe dye. It used to be used as a food coloring before they invented all the nasty crap they use nowadays.
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