Easter egg dyes?

826 Views 14 Replies 14 Participants Last post by Krisa, Apr 13, 2006

janebug

Discussion Starter · Mar 30, 2006

Anybody have any good ideas/recipes for natural easter egg dyes?

I saw a recipe in my LLL cookbook but it said it's best to do it when the dye is hot and my ds is just 21 months so i don't think hot dye will work for us

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Attached Mama

· #2 · Mar 30, 2006

a few drops of food coloring and vinegar and i think a bit of water - recipe should be on all food coloring boxes. food coloring is chemicals tho - but i think Whole Foods sells food coloring made from food - or google it maybe

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CryPixie83

· #3 · Mar 30, 2006

I've been thinking about this too with the egg holidays coming up and found this:

http://www.celestialseasonings.com/r...ng_article.php

http://www.geocities.com/RainForest/.../egg-dyes.html

http://www.aeb.org/kidsandfamily/eas...aturaldyed.asp

http://jas.familyfun.go.com/crafts?p...&craftid=11172

http://www.naturalfamilyonline.com/1...aster-eggs.htm

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Rhiannon Feimorgan

· #4 · Mar 30, 2006

Not natural, but a fun way to colour eggs with a child not ready for hot water is to wrap the egg in brightly coloured tissue paper and then wet it with a spray bottle. Let the egg sit until dry and unwrap. The dye from the paper will bleed onto the egg and give it a tye dye effect.

It's a great way to recycle tissue paper from birthdays and Christmas.

For natural colour, onion skins make a nice yellow and beets make pink. Simmer them in water with the eggs and add some vinigar. A small child could help you put the ingrediance in the pot befor you boil them or draw on the egg with a white crayon to make a resist pattern.

We also like to make tea eggs to eat at Easter. Lightly boil the eggs1-2min, then tap the shells with a spoon to crack them. Put them back into the water and add salt and 2-3 tea bags, boil another 5 min and let them cool in the water. When you peel them they will have a lovely pattern on the egg itself and a nice flavor.

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shoefetishem

· #5 · Mar 31, 2006

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my3wiggles

· #6 · Mar 31, 2006

We save all the colorful tissue paper that comes with gifts for decorating Easter eggs. The kids shred the tissue into small pieces,then dunk the eggs in water, and cover the eggs with pieces of tissue. Put the eggs back into the egg carton to dry overnight. This is alot of fun with minimal mess, and the eggs are beautiful. They sort of look like stained glass.

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rabbithorns

· #7 · Apr 1, 2006

There's an ancient piece of paper floating around my recipe book and here's what I wrote on it when my kids were babies: (we did these BTW)

Pink: boil 12 ounce package cranberry; hot or cold dye
Yellow: 3 TBSP turmeric; boil
Dark Pink: 4 cups chopped beets; boil
Brown/Gold: rub with vinegar then wrap with onion skins and seal with rubber band
Dark Lavendar: 4 cups frozen blueberries
Blue: 2 head coarsely chopped red cabbage; add 2 quart water and 6 TBSP white vinegar; soak overnight

Anyway, I don't have any more instructions. Maybe someone who has done this (and remembers more) can elaborate.

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amybw

· #8 · Apr 1, 2006

There's one in the new Chicken Soup Magazine.
I will post it later, but just wanted to mention it so i dont forget.

Amy

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late-night nan

· #9 · Apr 2, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by rabbithorns
There's an ancient piece of paper floating around my recipe book and here's what I wrote on it when my kids were babies: (we did these BTW)

Pink: boil 12 ounce package cranberry; hot or cold dye
Yellow: 3 TBSP turmeric; boil
Dark Pink: 4 cups chopped beets; boil
Brown/Gold: rub with vinegar then wrap with onion skins and seal with rubber band
Dark Lavendar: 4 cups frozen blueberries
Blue: 2 head coarsely chopped red cabbage; add 2 quart water and 6 TBSP white vinegar; soak overnight

Anyway, I don't have any more instructions. Maybe someone who has done this (and remembers more) can elaborate.

Great recipes, but are the large amounts (*e.g. 4 c. blueberries) needed even for just a dozen eggs? How long do you need to keep the eggs in the dye? TIA

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rabbithorns

· #10 · Apr 2, 2006

It's been a LONG time since we did this. I do remember a huge mess but lots of fun with the kids!

I don't think I used nearly the amounts listed and I remember leaving eggs in until they were the colors we wanted. So some were lighter and some were darker shades. But we had little money so I can't imagine I had more than a cup or two of blueberries.

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gratefulbambina

· #11 · Apr 3, 2006

Heres Frontiers egg dyes

http://www.frontiercoop.com/learn/herbsavvy12.html

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ollineeba

· #12 · Apr 7, 2006

We always used the vinegar when we were little.. stinky, but it worked well

I haven't thought about what we will do this year.. lots of ideas to choose from!

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HelloKitty

· #13 · Apr 7, 2006

We dyed some eggs using natural dyes a few weeks ago and they came our really, really pretty. What we did was take 3 cups of water, add whatever we wanted for colors (will get to that) and boiled until the water was as dark a color as we wanted (remember that with natural dyes it will be a lighter, more muted shade then you will get with commerical dyes). Then we added a teaspoon or so of salt, a couple tablespoons of cream of tarter and a couple tablespoons of vinegar.

For some dyes it can take a looooooong time for the color to transfer, for others - not so long. It varies greatly. If the color is not as dark as you want just leave your eggs for an hour or so and come back.

The ones we did were carrots and paprika - came out a real pretty rusty orange color

onions - yellow (took a long time in the dye)

Beets - gorgeous pink color

and my very favorite was red cabbage which came out like a robin's egg blue. Spectacular! These ones had to sit in the dye for over an hour though to really take the color.

Have fun with it!!!!!

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fremontmama

· #14 · Apr 11, 2006

Oh I am so glad I found this, I was just wondering what we were going to do this weekend with our egg dying and my recent purging of as much chemical crap from my house as possible. I was having issues with the thought of regular food coloring on my eggs.