Dying Eggs

Over the last few years I have tried a number of ways to dye eggs in the run up to Easter. Every process has been different and fun.

I’m going to share the methods we have used so far.

Natural dyes – This was the first type of dying I did, when we still lived in Abu Dhabi. It’s quite a lengthy process – you have to prepare the natural dyes first and then add the eggs. The longer you leave them in the better the result. We used red cabbage, turmeric, blueberries, ginger and onion. You need to cut up the vegetables and boil them and then strain the water into cups. You then place a egg into each cup. There are lots of different fruits and vegetables you can use to get different colours.

2. Shaving foam and food colouring – this one is messy! We squirted lots of shaving foam into a container and then added drops of food colouring. It was fun to put our hands into! We then gently rolled the eggs around in the foam, then removed them and wiped the foam off and left to dry.

To be honest I was a little disappointed with the colours I got with both processes above. They were fun to do but other people got better results. The problem, I soon realised, was that I was using brown eggs. White are, obviously, easier to dye! Except that it can be hard to find white eggs in the supermarkets!

I did some research and found a company called O’Egg (I think it might now be called Margarets) that sells their eggs in Supervalu. They don’t always have them in stock so I usually ring ahead and check my local store before making the trip.

3. Rice – The other year we tried a simple method where you place uncooked rice in a zip lock bag with a few drops of food colouring and shake it around until the rice is coloured. Then pop an egg in the bag too and shake shake shake!

4. Kitchen paper, markers and water – This is a very simple process. The kids used markers to colour paper towels whatever way they liked. We then wrapped the eggs in the paper towels and secured them with elastic bands. Next we used s spray bottle to wet the paper towels around the eggs causing the colours to run onto the eggs. The longer you leave them the better the results!

5. Last year we had great fun dying eggs with baking soda, vinegar and food colouring. You will know if you have read one of my earlier posts that we are fans of the baking soda and vinegar reaction! For this experiment we put some baking soda and food colouring into little bowls and then added an egg to each bowl. We then added vinegar to each bowl to cause the reaction and colour the eggs. They turned out quite well!