Natural Egg Dyes
I was actually quite amused that our local newspaper posted various scraps that can be used for natural egg dyes for Easter/Ostara/Spring. I’ve used these methods before, but they actually listed some I hadn’t heard about, so I thought I’d share.
Robins’s Egg Blue - Red cabbage leaves
Rich brownish-orange - Yellow onion skins
Golden-brown, lightly mottled - Walnut shells
Pink to red - Beets
Mottled beige - Beet tops
Pale Yellow - Orange peels
Mottled brown on yellow-green - Carrot tops
Blue: canned blueberries or red cabbage leaves
Lightly mottled gray-green - Spinach
Gray-lavender with green mottling - Cranberries
Light brown - CoffeeA few extras:
Pale yellow - White Grapes
Yellow - Tumeric
Yellow-orange - Vanilla Extract
Yellow green - Daffodil Blossoms
Orange - Dandelions
Orange - Onions
Rusty Orange - Orris Root
Orange brown - Paprika
Pink - Heather
Green-gold: yellow delicious apple peels
Pale green: spinach leaves
Madder root - Red
Put ingredients in the water with the eggs and bring to a simmer. Add a teaspoon of vinegar to help the color penetrate the eggshell. After 20 minutes, remove the eggs from the heat, but leave in the dye bath until the desired color is achieved. In some cases it may require being put in the refridgerator overnight.
Another recipe to add designs to your eggs (with pictures), originally by Rosminah:
Ingredients:
brown onion skins (half a grocery bag-ish of the dry papery stuff)
1/4 Cup white vinegar
raw white eggs (I prefer medium ones)
thin flowers and leaves - the best ones are flat enough to form a good seal
old nylon stockings, cut into squares
twist ties
a little vegetable oil
Directions to make the dye:
Put onion skins into a big kitchen pot, fill pot 1/3 with water or enough to eventually cover eggs by an inch. Bring to boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until the water is dyed a rich red-brown. Stir in vinegar. Set aside while you deal with eggs.
Directions to make the eggs:
Press botanicals against raw eggs and tie in place with the pieces of nylon stockings and twist ties.
Put eggs in the pot of dye and boil as long as you normally would to boil an egg. About 8 minutes.
Remove eggs from pot and when cool enough to handle, remove the nylon and spent botanicals. Rinse gently if the greens stick to the egg. Some botanicals will transfer extra color onto the eggs, but the egg generally will stay white where the botanicals covered them.
Gently rub a *very* small amount of vegetable oil onto the eggs. This makes them shine.
Entry viewed times. Posted in Natural Living
2 Responses to “Natural Egg Dyes”
April 6th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
[…] Last April I posted about different natural ways to make Natural Egg Dyes. […]
April 7th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
that is so cool! I have to try that!!! I think a trip to the store is in order, lol!