How to dye Easter eggs naturally

Dying Easter eggs using common household food, herbs and spices is easy. It takes a little longer than conventional Easter egg dyes, but it smells better and you won’t be afraid for your family to eat the eggs once they’re done. Use hard-boiled eggs for this project, so go ahead and boil them first. This will ensure that the eggs are fully cooked. One important note: if you plan on eating the eggs, be sure to refrigerate them once you’re done.

Place your dye ingredients (see below) in a pot big enough to hold the number of eggs you want to dye, allowing for room for your eggs to not be touching. Add enough water so you’ll be able to cover the eggs by about an inch, then boil to extract the color. Keep it simmering until you like the color, then strain. To avoid the straining process, simply place your ingredients in cheese cloth and tightly secure them within the cloth. To each color bath, add up to two tablespoons of white vinegar to help the dye set. Be careful not to add too much vinegar or it will break down the egg shells making them very thin and prone to breakage. Your eggs will dye better, more evenly and faster if the color bath is hot/warm.

Here’s what we used for color:

For purplish-red:

• cranberries, red wine

For yellow:

• turmeric

For bluish-purple:

• blueberries, red grapes, red onion skins

Allow the eggs to soak, covered completely in the color bath, for as long as you want. Keep checking the color and when you like how it looks, take it out and let it dry. Every once in awhile, rotate your eggs to dye them evenly.

In order to get a variety of colors, we let some of the eggs soak in more than one color bath. Easy! Fun! The kids loved the surprise of each egg’s color as they came out.

A huge thank you goes out to Two Men and a Little Farm for the inspiration for this activity . Go check out their blog for an awesome chart of different ingredients to get a wide range of colors, and to see how beautifully their eggs turned out.

How about you? Will you dye your Easter eggs naturally this Easter?