How to Color Easter Eggs with Natural Dyes

Coloring eggs for Easter with natural dyes is fun and a great way to teach kids to be green and use what's on hand at home rather than buying artificial dyes.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. To get started, either boil white eggs and then dye, or for a darker color you may boil the eggs in the dye. If you have children who want to help, you might want to have some eggs already boiled and let them help with the first method.

2. 
    

   For a purple Easter egg, grape juice works well as a natural dye. For a darker purple, leave the egg in the juice for a few hours or in the refrigerator overnight. No need to boil the grape juice.
   To make a blue egg, use the juice from canned blueberries or red cabbage leaves. Red cabbage leaves turn the egg more blue than red. Simply boil red cabbage leaves for several minutes and let cool. Strain out the leaves and put the eggs in the juice. You can either boil raw eggs in the juice or use the juice cold just like you would with store-bought dyes.

3. 
    

   For pink Easter eggs, use the juice from a can of beets. Be sure and eat the beets, they are good for you. You could also use the juice from fresh boiled beets. The juice from canned cherries will work for a pink egg too. For a redder egg, boil the skins from several red onions.

4. 
    

   For green Easter eggs, use the water from boiled spinach or liquid chlorophyll if you have it on hand.
   A natural dye for a beige or brown egg is coffee or black tea.

5. 
    

   The water from cooked carrots makes a nice natural dye for an orange Easter egg. Be sure to eat the carrots, they are good for you too. Or another option for an orange egg is paprika dissolved in water. The more paprika used, the stronger the color.
   Green tea or chamomile tea can be used as a natural dye to make a yellow Easter egg or turmeric or cumin dissolved in water works too.

6. Remember the idea is to have fun. Be creative and use what you have on hand at home. Experiment and see what happens. That is half the fun. Happy egg coloring!!

Tips & Warnings

• Use a teaspoon of vinegar in each dye.
• Rub vegetable oil on the dyed eggs after they are dry, for a glossy finish.
• Put down lots of old newspapers to catch any mess.
• Try using some brown eggs and see what happens with the colors.
• There are no rules, just fun.

[vallain]

on 4/10/2009 My Mom talks about using some of these dyes back in the 1930s when she was a kid.

[rhea2010]

on 4/6/2009 Neat article on how to color easter eggs with natural dyes. My kids love to color easter eggs so I will try this! 5*

[herbgardener1]

on 4/6/2009 Coloring Easter eggs with natural dyes is something I've always wanted to try. Some of these I've never heard so will try them. Good job on some new ideas.

[kaytay]

on 4/5/2009 excellent ways to reuse natural things to color easter eggs

[pondsrus]

on 4/5/2009 Great article. I love all the colors of Easter. 5*