For the past few years, it has become trendy to try and dye Easter eggs using natural plant material. Of course this is right up my alley, so I thought what better time to try it than when I have a rambunctious toddler, a teething baby on the verge of crawling, and moving boxes all over the house reminding me I need to get packing ASAP! Well, I never claimed to be an intelligent woman.
I had a few ideas in my head as to what substance I could use to make certain colors, mostly from browsing the internet and admiring other online posts about natural dyes. I have also checked out some books from the library on the topic. My favorite book I’ve found for this subject is Natural Color by Sasha Duerr. Its images and font are eye candy alone, but the information it contains is even better! Go and see if your local library carries this wonderful book!
As my family is getting ready to move in the next few weeks, I wanted to use what I could find around the house to save time and money, as well as not accumulate more items I would need to end up packing. As you can see in the above image, I decided on: Spirulina (which I had on hand as a superfood supplement when I was preparing to have our second child), Ground Coffee, Turmeric, Avocado Pits (from avocados my husband happened to have picked up at the store), Elderberries, and Black Tea. I had all of these items in my cupboards already- except for the elderberries which I had already used up making our syrup for the winter months, otherwise I would have had that on hand as well.
As you can probably see in the image above, I decided to use wooden eggs so that my boys could play with them as toys after Easter has passed. I have never dyed anything using natural matter before, but I could tell that the natural wood influenced the final color of the eggs. So, some of these colors may not be a true representation of the plant matter if it were to be used on something else, say fabric or another white surface. Even so, I think the colors turned out beautifully and I am so pleased with them.
Green (Spirulina) I was most bummed out by the result of this one, as I was certain it would create a deep and vibrant green (as you can see from the original powder in the images above). I may not have simmered the powder long enough, so I will experiment with this more in the future, however I still think the color turned out pretty neat. It’s has more of a tie-dye effect than all the others.
Brown (Ground Coffee & Black Tea) I wasn’t sure if these two would end up creating different colors, but they turned out very similar. In the future I will pick just one of them, depending on what I have in my cupboards.
Yellow (Turmeric) Turmeric stains anything that comes into contact with it, even if it’s just a little dabble of powder. I have turmeric stains on wooden spoons, clothes, dishcloths, tupperware, you name it. So I was not surprised that the yellow eggs turned out striking (Side note: I JUST realized I have been spelling Turmeric wrong this WHOLE TIME! Insert my cringe and head-in-hands moment here. Sorry guys, that’s what mom brain does to ya. Too late to change it now, ugh! Well, not unless I want to dig the paper bag out of the garbage, add an R, re-create the photo and edit and email it to myself again, and mama ain’t got that much time- or patience! See, I told you I wasn’t an intelligent woman.)
Blush Red (Avocado Pits) This one was a total experiment. I had seen someone dye some silk using avocado pits and it turned out the most soft shade of pink, however with the eggs already being wood, it just made the wood look a little more cherry than oak.
Purple (Elderberries) I was hoping this one would turn out as vibrant as it does when we make our homemade syrup over the winter, and I was not disappointed! Definitely my favorite color out of them all.
Method: For each dye I simply brought 2 cups of water to a boil, then added the material and simmered for about 30 minutes. Spirulina (2 TBSP), Ground Coffee (1 cup), Turmeric (2 TBSP), Avocado Pits (4 sliced in half), Elderberries (3/4 cup), Black Tea (5 tea bags). Once the material had simmered, I poured the strained liquid into a mason jar, added 2 TBSP white vinegar, and plopped one egg in each jar. (NOTE: I only used 6 mason jars- one for each dye- and did two rounds of egg dyeing. So, the second set of eggs were using the same mason jars as the first set of eggs.) I used empty beer bottles turned upside-down to keep the egg at the bottom of the jar, otherwise it would float on top. I kept each egg in the jar for at least 24 hours, then dried it on a paper bag for the same amount of time.
The wooden eggs I used were from target’s dollar section, and they came with their own little carton to place them in.
Happy dyeing!