natural egg dying

Last year around this time, I saw a couple of people out there doing natural egg dying and I knew it was something I wanted to try.  Artificial dyes are just not good for our bodies so I try to avoid them as much as possible.  So this year, I knew that natural egg dying was what we were going to do in our house.   The kids and I dyed our eggs together before the Easter bunny came, but I wasn’t able to get this post together before then- sorry friends!  Better late than never though, right?

I just used what we had in the fridge: red peppers, turmeric, kale, blueberries, and beets.  [Ok so I did a little bit of googling to find recipes to get started from.] Some worked better than others [see below].  I actually used frozen blueberries [not the fresh ones you see in the first picture] because they bleed more color when you warm them up than fresh.

After hard boiling the eggs, I recycled the boiled water by pouring it over each of the different fruits, veggies, and spices in separate bowls and covered to let it cool to room temperature to create the dye baths.

After the water had cooled, I removed the solid particles with slotted spoon and discarded.  I then added 1/4 cup of white vinegar to each dye bath and stirred.

In these bowls, I could fit 2-3 eggs each.  Then I re-covered the bowls and put them in the refrigerator overnight.  And in the morning we had these!  I kind of think they are perfectly imperfect.  [Plus chubby baby arm: swoon.] They had a bit of a marbled effect, which I liked, but for more even color, I would suggest turning them in their baths once or twice while they are resting in there.

The baths that worked the best were the beet, blueberry, and turmeric.  These colors came out the most saturated and vibrant.  The kale and red pepper did not leave much of a tint on the egg shells, even with extra time in the hot water or in the dye baths.

The beet dye worked so well, the whites of the eggs even took on the pretty pink hue.  I sort of loved that part too.  What I did not love as much was when the beet dye spilled all over my refrigerator, but I guess we won’t blame the eggs for that.

Next time I want to try onion skins (both red and yellow) but I still need a good green.  Any suggestions?   If so, please leave in the comments below!