I know it's a little early to be thinking seriously about Easter and eggs and things of that sort, but I stumbled across this blog post and got really stupidly excited about coloring eggs that I just went and did it yesterday afternoon because obviously.
My sister came over and together we followed the instructions on the aforementioned blog to create our own naturally dyed easter eggs.
I have been falling in love with things that are natural and homemade. I think there is something to be said for the sense of satisfaction you get when you can look at something and be like "hey! I made that!" And so, we boiled eggs and we boiled vegetables and then we soaked our eggs for a ridiculous amount of time to get juuuust the right saturation of color.
We only colored a dozen eggs, six brown ones and six white ones. They turned out glorious.
I boiled purple cabbage (which created the blue color), grated beet (which created the red color), the skin of a yellow onion (for yellow, obvs) and then I also used red wine to see what would happen.
These eggs I soaked in the wine first. It didn't really color them how I had imagined, so then I soaked them in the purple cabbage dye, which turned them into these masterpieces. They are my favorites of the bunch!
These eggs, believe it or not, were dyed from the purple cabbage. These were the brown eggs. The white ones were a little lighter and more evenly colored. They didn't get the awesome green swirledge that is happening here to make these eggs look like mother earth.
This is the white egg that was in the yellow onion skin dye. I love how rustic it looks.
On the whole, this was a great experiment and I probably won't go back to dying eggs out of a box ever again. Not only are these colors absolutely brilliant, but the potential for using all sorts of different types of vegetables makes me nerdily excited about all these easter eggs.
The only thing I have to say is that if you're coloring eggs with kiddos this year, these eggs have to sit a good long time in the dye, unlike those out of the box. So if the wee ones are impatient, this may not be as fun for you as it was for me. I mean, I let these suckers soak for a good three hours just so that I was sure they would be good and colored.
My kitchen may have been rank with the stench of sauerkraut since I was boiling cabbage and onions, but dudes, it was totally worth it.
Oh cool! I love those! Never thought of doing this.
ReplyDelete~Stephanie
Way back when the only dyes people had were those that came from natural products. Fabric mostly came in a neutral and was called home spun and was rough and burlap like. Wild plants and flowers were used for colors, much like you just did but even more rustic in that the dyes didn't always set and when washed, leaked off one fabric onto another. I'm sure, being an artist, you know all that. At any rate, it was a great experiment and since the eggs turned out so pretty, one I'm sure you'll try again. I'm curious to know if those soaked in cabbage taste like cabbage, etc. You must let us know.
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