Natural Dye Recipe for Easter Eggs

Beets, red cabbage, blueberries, and onion skins make beautiful natural colors on Easter eggs.

One trip to the grocery store on Friday, and you have what you need to make Easter Sunday naturally beautiful. This project is great for kids, as well as for crafty adults — and making these eggs reminds us that nature provides not just food, but color, too. You might just find yourself saving onion skins in a paper bag for your next craft project.

You may have some of the ingredients on hand, but here’s a shopping list, and some basic instructions.

Shopping list

2 dozen white eggs

1 quart of white vinegar

1 box of baking soda

1 jar of ground turmeric

2 pints blueberries

6 fresh red beets

1 red cabbage

3 cups yellow onion skins (Or red onions skins, but don’t mix.)

6 cups carrot greens (Just the leafy tops… but don’t worry if you can’t get them. You can leave these off.)

Instructions

Each colorant needs its own non-reactive pot: turmeric, blueberries, red beets, red cabbage, carrot greens, onion skins. You can do each ingredient one at a time, cleaning your pot thoroughly in between, or you can brew up each colorant simultaneously using multiple pots.

Put a quart and a half of water into a non-reactive pot. Add at least 3 cups of your dye ingredients (except for turmeric, where 1/4 to 1/3 of a cup will do). Chop the beets and the cabbage. The rest can get tossed in.

Here’s where the options start. If you want brighter colors, add 1/2 cup of white vinegar: the acidity helps make the colors a bit more vivid. If you want moody colors, throw in a rusty nail or a couple of rusty washers: the iron content shifts the color towards darker values.

With red cabbage, it’s nice to try two pots: one with vinegar, and one with a half cup of baking soda. The alkilinity shifts the color to a beautiful Egyptian blue.

Boil the dyestuffs for 10 minutes, and then gently add ROOM TEMPERATURE eggs. Boil for another 8 or so. Turn the heat off. Remove one egg from each color and wrap it tightly in kitchen twine. Immerse those eggs in a different color of your choosing. Let eggs sit overnight in their various liquids, occasionally stirring or basting the eggs if they are not completely covered in liquid.

Remove the eggs the next morning. Unwrap any twine. Be inventive now: while wet, the pigment is still malleable. You can gently rub stripes into the surfaces, or make dappled marks with your fingertips. You can dip your fingers in another color and add nuances and marks. You can sift salt over a wet egg and let it dry. When you brush it off, interesting textures remain.

You can choose to pour dye liquids into small bowls, and let eggs sit partially covered in contrasting colors. Keep playing with the surfaces until you have something unique and rich… like Nature itself!