Each year my son loves to dye eggs and I enjoy doing it with him. He just loves to eat hard boiled eggs, so putting the fun colors on them is just an added bonus.
We’ve always used the little tabs that come in a pack to dye our Easter eggs, but as I have become more skeptical of highly processed food items and heard all the criticisms for feeding food dye to children, I thought we’d try our hand at making natural Easter egg dye. Well, and it is mostly just the fact that I love a challenge and it seemed fun to try to figure out what I could use from around the house to dye the eggs.
The one caveat to the whole deal was that after looking around and seeing all these sites for making homemade egg dye, I saw that they called for boiling the ingredients in a pot for 30 minutes. I hate dirty dishes and did not feel like trying to boil 6 different pots of stuff to make egg dye. I’ll admit it, that is just too much work to me.
To make the dye for these eggs all you have to do is boil a teakettle of water and then pour it over the ingredient you’re using as a dye and let it sit until cooled. Easy peasy!
We tried a bunch of veggies and household food items and most of them worked and a few didn’t (tomato sauce, carrot peels and peas).
What works:
- double strength coffee
- chili powder
- Blackberries (and blueberries would probably work well too)
- red cabbage
- green tea
- spinach (it does produce a pale color that is mostly yellowish actually)
Other suggestions that I haven’t tried:
- any type of fruit juice that is a bright color: grape, cherry etc…
- any type of colorful tea (herbal teas, dried fruit tea, black tea etc…)
- red onion peels
- ground spices (cumin, paprika, turmeric etc…)
- beets
- any type of berry
How to Make Easter Egg Dye
- Place a little handful of your desired item into mason jar or bowl that is big enough to add about a cup or cup and a half of water. For the spices I used just a heaping tablespoon or two. For the tea I prepared it to be double strength.
- Boil enough water to fill how ever many colors you’ll be using.
- Once the water is boiling pour about 1-1 1/2 cups into each container and let it cool.
- Once the jars are cool, strain your new dye into a fresh container. I had one extra and just strained each jar and ended up with one left over at the end. Add one tablespoon of vinegar per cup of liquid in each jar.
- Once you add an egg, stick the jars in the fridge and let them sit until your desired hue is reached. Some I only soaked a few hours and others I soaked overnight. The longer the eggs soak, the more intense the color will be.
While you’re thinking of Easter, making your own peeps or bunny truffles are definitely fun to do with the kiddos! These projects are not healthy, but Easter only comes once a year, right? :)
I love this idea! THanks for sharing and I love the new web look too. ;)
Thanks, Jen :)
Last year I boiled different vegetables to make the dyes. I am trying your method this year. Thank you for the tips!
You’re very welcome, Janice. Hope you have fun with dying your eggs :)
You can also use yellow onion skins. This makes a beautiful golden brown. And surprise, the red cabbage turns them blue. Turmeric makes a yellow.
Have fun!
Thanks for the tips, Marianne :)
What a fun idea, Katie! I never thought of using foods to dye Easter eggs, how creative! Thanks for sharing. Also, I’m having a great giveaway today with four potential prize winners, so you should enter!
Georgia, thanks for letting me know about your giveaway. I’ll have to check it out.
What a great post! I am hoping to dye some Easter eggs with my son this year and I love the idea of using things already in the fridge that are totally safe and natural. Can’t wait to try it out! Thanks!
Thanks, Rosalyn. I hope that you and your son have fun with the project :)
Great Ideas!!! I use all natural food dyes for my daughter’s birthday cakes as she is allergic to chemical based dyes. You can find more about it at http://creativecowgirl.co/2012/03/24/all-natural-food-dye-frosting/
I will be using your ideas to dye our eggs this year! Thanks so much!
You’re welcome, Teresa. Hope you all have fun dying your eggs :)
Great post. I have used coffee, cinnamon and tumeric for dyeing frosting. They were all very light, but worked.
Thanks for the tip on the frosting, Suzy. I bet that cinnamon frosting was tasty!
Hi Katie – how did you get the beautiful blue? I did a natural blue dye w/ cabbage but it didn’t turn out that vibrant. Maybe it’s b/c it was on an egg?
All I did was boil the water, dump i onto the cabbage and once it was cooled I added about 1T vinegar per cup of cabbage water. I guess every element accepts dye differently.
this is great!! THANK YOU!!
cannot wait to do this experiment with the baintrain for Easter!
You are vey welcome, Lib. Hope you all have fun with it!
These are so pretty! I love the blue ones!
Thanks, Vicki!
This is a great idea! Much easier then the ideas I’ve seen. Can’t wait to try.
Thanks, Vanessa. Hope you have fun with it!
Katie, LOVE this! I did that a couple years ago, this year got lazy and got a natural egg dye kit. Would love for you to share at Healthy 2day Wednesdays if you haven’t yet!
Natural egg dye kit works too :) I will try to stop by and share it. Thanks for the invite, Rachel.
I love this! Thanks Katie for sharing this seasonal post with us at Seasonal Celebration on Natural Mothers Network! Warmly, Rebecca x
Love this!
Very cute and pretty easy! I’m with you, I don’t like to use more dishes than I absolutely have to. Thanks for sharing it this week at Allergy-Free Wednesdays. Hope to see you back again next week. Have a great weekend!
~Michelle, AFW Hostess
Thanks, Michelle!
Love this idea!
Thanks for linking up!
I featured your post in my wrap up! http://tidymom.net/2012/12-easter-ideas/
Have a great weekend!
Thanks, Cheryl. You have a great weekend, too!
What type of cabbage did you use for the blue color – they are gorgeous!
Thanks, Leigh Anne. It was regular red cabbage you can get in any produce department. I was honestly surprised by the pretty color!
In the 50′s and 60′s, my grandmother, who was very careful with her money, always dyed her Easter eggs with the skins of red onions. She saved the skins as she used the onions until she had enough to make her dye, and the eggs were a beautiful russet color. Your method sounds easy and fun. Thanks for sharing.
That is so cool, Suzanne. I wish I knew more of what my grandma used to do. This method really is simple and fun to do with kids :)
I ditched the tabs for natural dyes this year as well. Here’s a link to my review – my results were a little different than yours. http://www.greenideareviews.com/2012/03/28/natural-easter-egg-dye-review-does-it-work/
I’m wondering if your colors fadeded away as quickly as mine?
There weren’t any problems with the colors fading. They stayed the same once they were dry. That is really interesting that you had issues.
Thanks so much for sharing. I was going to do some research on this and you had it on facebook. Thanks for doing the research for me!! :)
Excited to try it out.
The eggs look so much more natural than the store dye. Beautiful.
~Anastasia
My pleasure, Anastasia. I also like the way that the naturally dyed eggs look. It seems like they have more character.
Great tips; thanks so much for sharing! I’ve linked to it here: http://soulicious.net/2012/04/03/demystifying-labels-to-make-an-eggcellent-choice/
Thanks :)
Much prettier than fake dye, too! Pinning! Thanks for linking up to Healthy 2Day Wednesday….hope to see you back next week! :)
Thanks, Erin :)
I am looking forward to trying the dying your way. I also wanted to add that instead of buying mason jars I save glass jars after they are empty, like jelly and applesauce, for various uses like this.
We save our jars too :) Have fun dying the eggs!
Will the hard boiled eggs taste like spices, coffee, chili, fruity or will it taste like a regular hard boiled egg?
We didn’t have any issues with the eggs tasting “off.”
I like to add the color to the egg or water *before* hard-boiling the egg. Saves a lot of time, though it doesn’t save pots! Turmeric is best added to the water, onion skins and red cabbage can be wrapped around the eggs and secured with rubber bands. Hard boil, cool, and you’re done!
Also, vinegar is unnecessary and I only use it to shift the color of red cabbage (which changes color depending on the pH – from pink to blue to green). Vinegar is only a mordant for the artificial dyes. Natural dyes are a whole different world from the artificial dyes and though vinegar may affect the hue of a natural dye, it does not affect color fastness and is usually not necessary at all.
That is really interesting. Thanks for the tips, CP!
Those are beautiful! and I like the natural/rustic look that they have to.
Thanks for the ideas! Going to do the eggs tomorrow with the kids, and we are going to look around the kitchen for natural dyes. I think they might like the adventure of it.
Hope you all had fun with it :)
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