How to Dye your Easter Eggs Natural Ingredients

Entry #1064, April 2, 2012

The count down to Easter is here and find unique ways to decorate and dye your Easter eggs is on everyone’s mind. Today, I came across a great article from Green your Decor for dying eggs with food ingredients. You may remember Jennae Peterson from her Stagetecture Interview on green living in your home.

Today, she brings you easy steps for making all natural Easter egg dye that is simple, affordable and has no toxic dyes involved. Thanks Green your Decor for the ideas.

How to Dye your Easter Eggs Natural Ingredients

Natural Easter egg dye color

All images: Green your Decor

I set out to create eggs in the three primary colors — red, yellow and blue — thinking I’d be able to mix those colors to get a bunch of other colors. I also wanted to try dyeing the eggs with onion skins for a tie-dyed sort of look.

Ingredients you will need

Ingredients:

• Beets (red dye)
• Turmeric (yellow dye)
• Red cabbage (blue dye, believe it or not)
• Onions (or at least their skins)
• Vinegar
• Salt
• Water
• Cheesecloth or similar fabric
• Thin twine or yarn

Looks like a lot of red stuff, right? Well, if you notice the photo above, red is about the only color I didn’t achieve. I’ll start with the methods that worked well.

Red onion skins

Onion Skins

This is the only dye method for which you want to start with raw, unboiled eggs. The skin of one onion will cover about 1-2 eggs. Place the egg on top of a piece of cheesecloth or cotton. Begin covering a raw egg with onion skins.

Once covered, wrap the cloth around the egg and secure it with twine. Try to make this pretty snug, but remember that these eggs are uncooked, so they’ll break if handled too roughly.

Wrap eggs

Boil the cloth-covered eggs for about 30 minutes, then allow them to cool.

Unwrap the cloth and admire the beautiful patterns on your eggs. I expected the red onion skins to produce red staining, but I was just as happy with the moddled, yellowish look I actually wound up with.

BLUE

I was in a bit of disbelief the red cabbage could result in blue eggs, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out that this was true.  Cut up half a head of red cabbage, and put it in a pot with enough water to cover it. You can use a whole head of cabbage if you need a lot of blue eggs, but I only wanted a few. Add 1 tablespoon of vinegar and 1 tablespoon of salt. Bring it all to a boil, then cover the pot and it let it simmer for about 30 minutes.

Natural blue Easter eggs

Strain the cabbage and set the liquid aside for dyeing. Let it cool. Submerge your eggs in the dye, and get ready for a long wait.

Red cabbage

The blue eggs were beautiful and my uncontested favorite, but I had to let them soak overnight to achieve that color. Still, it was totally worth the wait to pull blue eggs out of the purplish liquid that came from the cabbage.

Let me know if you try any of these natural Easter egg dye ideas!

For more Easter ideas on Stagetecture, click here.