So we finally did it. This year we made our own natural Easter egg dyes using a variety of food items. The results were fine if I were doing the eggs myself, but my kids eventually requested the old tablets to get some of the deeper colors. They also like to do the immediate dip dyeing to create stripes and such. They weren’t patient enough to leave the eggs soaking for more than a few minutes at a time. We also tried over dying the brown eggs for the first time. It worked well with the pink/red dyes and gave us nice rich colors, but the rest of the colors just looked very muddy.
I had read quite a few posts on making my own dyes before I got started and I had a variety of items to test myself. Some of the dyes, like those made with sweet potatoes or carrots, never did much of anything, but others dyed everything in their path like the turmeric and blueberries.
Here are our top natural Easter egg dyes:
Turmeric (deep yellow)
Recipe:
- 1 TBSP of Turmeric per cup of water.
- Bring to a boil then let cool.
This dye created a deep yellow and stained everything, including my stove top and counter!
Blueberries (deep blue)
Recipe:
- 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries per cup of water.
- 1 tbsp vinegar per cup of water to help color set.
- Bring to a boil then let cool.
Red Cabbage (pink with vinegar, light blue without vinegar)
Recipe:
- 1 cup chopped cabbage per cup of water
- optional: 1 tbsp vinegar per cup of water (dye blue without vinegar, dye pink with vinegar)
- Bring to a boil and let simmer for 5-10 minutes.
The red cabbage is versatile because it can create two colors but we found you need to soak the eggs for a long time for the colors to really stick.
Pickled Beets (pink)
Recipe:
- 1 jar of beets with liquid per 2 cups of water.
- Bring to a boil then let cool.
The beets made a deep pink color and worked great on the brown eggs. Because I used pickled beets, I didn’t add any additional vinegar.
In the natural Easter egg dye photo above the red egg was made with pickled beets on a brown egg, the blue egg is blueberries on a white egg, the yellow is turmeric on a white egg.
Overall I enjoyed the process of making our own natural Easter egg dyes much more than the kids did. They just wanted their normal dye kit and considering we only use the dyes once a year, I’m not sure it is that big of a deal just to use the kits. I will say, I want to try using some of the dyes on wool. I think the wool fibers would take the natural dyes much easier than the egg shells.
