Nature Inspired Easter Eggs

Dye Your Easter Eggs with Natural Ingredients this Year!

 

Because Easter Sunday is coming up and we are all about nature inspired living, we thought it would be a great idea to share some natural ways to dye your Easter eggs this year. Going through the process of making your own natural dye and customizing your eggs gets you in the right spirit for Easter weekend.

We tried various natural ingredients that are easy to get at any grocery store. You may even already have them at home. To dye our dozen eggs we chopped up some purple cabbage, beets, we used the skins of red and yellow onions, as well as some turmeric.

 

What you will need:

• Eggs
• Natural dye matter (cabbage, beets, onion skins, turmeric, etc.)
• White vinegar (to add to your dye)
• A pair of thin nylons, leaves and flowers to customize eggs if desired
• Rubber bands to customize
• Crayons to customize

 

Here you can see almost all of the items we used to colour and customize our Easter eggs

Here is a little overview of ingredients and the colours they create. It’ll make a huge difference if you use white or brown eggs, how concentrated your dye is and for how long you leave the egg in the dye.

 

Per 1 cup of water use 

1cup of Chopped Purple cabbage: makes green on brown eggs, blue on white eggs

1cup Red Onion Skins: makes red or lavender eggs

1cup Yellow Onion Skins: rusty red on brown eggs, orange on white eggs

1cup of Chopped Beets: make maroon on brown eggs, light pink on white eggs

2Tbs Ground Turmeric: makes yellow eggs

 

While your eggs are boiling you want to get your natural dye ready. Add your dye matter to the right amount of water and bring it to a boil then turn down the heat to low. Let it simmer covered for around 15-30 minutes depending on how dark you want your dye to be. Make sure that the temperature is very low and that the pot you are using is covered. Otherwise the water will evaporate very quickly. The dye should look darker then the desired egg colour you want in the end. You can also check the colour by dropping some dye on a white napkin.

While your natural dye simmers you can get your eggs ready and customize them if you wish. Recently we came across a short video on Facebook that showed a cool technique on how to get patterns on your eggs using leaves and flowers. We went outside and collected a little bit of everything we could find. Once you have collected flowers and leaves of your choice, you will use a pair of thin nylons to create fun patterns (this is the perfect time to get rid of your old ones with holes if you are someone that tends to keep them instead of throwing them out right away).

You will cut off a small piece from one leg of the nylons, around 3 inches long. Take a leave or flower and place it over an egg; wherever you want the pattern to appear afterwards. Now take the piece of nylons and wrap it around your egg. Seal the nylons tightly so the flower or leave stays in place (we used small rubbers bands). This is just one idea to be creative a to create different pattern on your egg.

You can also wrap rubber bands around your eggs where you want it to stay its natural colour. This way you can create horizontal, vertical stripes, as well as a plait pattern. You can also use crayons and carefully draw some patterns on your eggs. Wherever you applied the crayon the egg will remain its natural colour. You can also play around using multiple dye colours on one egg. Dipping it first into one colour then another one. This can create fun patterns and new colours.

Put your customized Easter eggs to the side and check on your naturally made dye and see if you are satisfied with the result. Strain the water and get rid of the dye matter. Add 1Tbs of white vinegar per 1cup of dye.

Now take your eggs and put them into the desired colour and let the dye cool down with the egg(s) in it. To speed up the process you can put the dye into the fridge for a while, but it shouldn’t be below room temperature in the end. If the eggs and dye get too cold the natural colour won’t stick to the egg. Leave your eggs in the dye as long as you desire until you are satisfied with the result. Because it is all natural dye it’s not as aggressive as the artificial and chemical ones, meaning your eggs may have to soak longer than with bought artificial colours.

 

Here is the result of our Nature Inspired Easter Eggs:

 

Unfortunately we left the eggs together with the dye a little bit too long in the fridge and didn’t let it sit at room temperature. That’s why some of the dye on a few eggs came off. We decided it looks like a cool pattern… A little hint to finish off the look of your Easter eggs: Rub some oil onto the eggs to make them look really polished and shiny 😉

We hope we were able to inspire you for the upcoming Easter weekend. This is the perfect activity for families and anybody who likes to be crafty and artsy.

Share your Easter egg results and any Easter pictures you are taking this weekend in Wilden with us on our Wilden Facebook page. We are looking forward to your captures.

Have fun with you nature inspired naturally made Easter egg dye and let us know in the comments below if you like this article and what you would like to hear about next.

 

Happy Easter to all of our Wilden residents and of course everybody else,

– The Wilden Team