Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs
I decided to naturally dye some eggs this week in preparation for Easter, and I’m sharing my results in a new YouTube video this morning. To dye these eggs, I used yellow onion skins, red onion skins, purple cabbage and white distilled vinegar. That’s it! Though, full disclosure, I would have included turmeric if I had found any in my pantry.
I used the same method to set up all three dye baths: cover the plant material in water, add a glug of white distilled vinegar to help with a consistent pH, and then bring it up to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes until the water has absorbed the color.
I used uncooked brown eggs from my backyard chickens, but you could easily use store-bought eggs instead. Just be aware that your color results may be brighter than mine if you use white eggs.
I gently spooned my eggs into my boiling dye pots alongside the plant material, and cooked them for 10 minutes until they were hard-boiled. Then, I turned off the heat and let them cool down for 30 minutes or so before fishing them out.
Sidenote: I chose to keep the plant material in the dye baths this time around because I thought it might add some interesting texture to the eggshells, but I would definitely strain it out next time. While it did create texture, it doesn’t look intentional, so I would prefer to just have solid colored eggs.
After removing the eggs, I noticed the eggs dyed in the red and yellow onion skin baths were rich in color while the cabbage-dyed eggs turned a subtle lilac. As the eggs continued to dry, parts of the lilac turned blue, which I thought was interesting.
I could have stopped there and left them as they were, but I decided I wanted to jar them up and let them continue to soak overnight in their respective dye liquid to see if the color would continue to intensify. While both yellow and red onion-dyed eggs did continue to deepen in color beautifully, it was the cabbage-dyed eggs that blew me away. They went from a light, barely-there lilac color to an intense blue. Check out the transformation in my YouTube video below.
Have you tried dyeing eggs naturally? If so, I’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments.
