How to Make Natural Vegetable Dye for Decorating Eggs
Posted by OXO on 22nd Mar 2022
It's easier than you think to DIY Easter egg dye with ingredients from your kitchen. Get our best recipes for making an array of fesitive spring colours.
Nothing says "spring has sprung"quite like the abundance of florals and pastel colours. And eggs. Eggs are everywhere - we've talked about how to prepare eggs, but now we're talking about something different: dyeing them.
At OXO, we're always looking for creative ways to make tasks easier, so we've broken down our favourite ways to use natural ingredients to create Easter egg dyes.
Hard Boil Your Eggs
The first step is to hard boil your desired number of eggs. Once your eggs are hard boiled and cooled, you can mix up these dye recipes. The recipe below makes about enough dye for half a dozen eggs, so you have the option of making multiple colours.
DIY Natural Easter Egg Dye Recipe
1. Fill a saucepan with two cups of water and add your choice of dye materials (see below for options), then bring to a boil. Once it boils, turn the heat to low and simmer for about fifteen minutes or until the dye appears several shades darker than you want your egg.
2. Pour the dye through a colander into a bowl (you want the dye to be deep enough to cover the eggs!) and allow it to cool. 3. Stir in two tablespoons of white vinegar (without the acidity of the vinegar, the calcium in the eggshells won't break down enough to let the dye seep in, so don't forget this step.
Natural Orange Dye Recipe
To create a soft burnt orange shade, we added two cups of yellow onion peels to the water prior to boiling. The rust colour created by the onion skins is a perfect compliment to the pastel hues of other traditional egg dyes.
Robin's Egg Blue DIY Dye
If you can stand the smell of boiled cabbage (some people find it very polarizing), you'll be thrilled with the results of creating a purple cabbage- based dye solution; after you boil two cups of shredded purple cabbage, the dyed eggs will turn a rich robin's egg blue.
Natural Pink Dye for Easter Eggs
It's a truth universally acknowledged that the way to create a natural red or pink dye is to incorporate beets - their juice has been used as a dye for wool for many years... and is notorious for lending those same properties to countertops, cutting boards, and fingers. To make eggs a bright, poppy pink, we added two cups of grated beets to the water before boiling.
Natural Yellow Due Recipe
We love tumeric - the Indian spice is known for giving many curries a rich colour, and the same warm yellow can be used to dye frosting for cookies. The spice can also be used to give eggs a vibrant, springy hue - simply add four tablespoons of tumeric to the water solution prior to boiling.
Greens, purples, bright oranges...
Many of the solutions listed above are perfect for making solid, primary - coloured eggs; if you want to get creative with your dying, try mixing ingredients - adding tumeric to the cabbage solution, for example, can create a green dye, whereas adding a bit of cabbage to the beet solution will create a lovely lavender shade.
A final note:
Thr richness of your dye depends on the amount of time you leave the egg submerged in the solution; if you want a bold, loud colours, we recommend placing the eggs directly into the bowl and refrigerating overnight. If you're looking for more muted, pale colours, dunkin the eggs for 2-5 minutes generally does the trick.
It's easier than you think to DIY Easter egg dye with ingredients from your kitchen. Get our best recipes for making an array of fesitive spring colours.
Nothing says "spring has sprung"quite like the abundance of florals and pastel colours. And eggs. Eggs are everywhere - we've talked about how to prepare eggs, but now we're talking about something different: dyeing them.
At OXO, we're always looking for creative ways to make tasks easier, so we've broken down our favourite ways to use natural ingredients to create Easter egg dyes.
Hard Boil Your Eggs
The first step is to hard boil your desired number of eggs. Once your eggs are hard boiled and cooled, you can mix up these dye recipes. The recipe below makes about enough dye for half a dozen eggs, so you have the option of making multiple colours.
DIY Natural Easter Egg Dye Recipe
1. Fill a saucepan with two cups of water and add your choice of dye materials (see below for options), then bring to a boil. Once it boils, turn the heat to low and simmer for about fifteen minutes or until the dye appears several shades darker than you want your egg.
2. Pour the dye through a colander into a bowl (you want the dye to be deep enough to cover the eggs!) and allow it to cool. 3. Stir in two tablespoons of white vinegar (without the acidity of the vinegar, the calcium in the eggshells won't break down enough to let the dye seep in, so don't forget this step.
Natural Orange Dye Recipe
To create a soft burnt orange shade, we added two cups of yellow onion peels to the water prior to boiling. The rust colour created by the onion skins is a perfect compliment to the pastel hues of other traditional egg dyes.
Robin's Egg Blue DIY Dye
If you can stand the smell of boiled cabbage (some people find it very polarizing), you'll be thrilled with the results of creating a purple cabbage- based dye solution; after you boil two cups of shredded purple cabbage, the dyed eggs will turn a rich robin's egg blue.
Natural Pink Dye for Easter Eggs
It's a truth universally acknowledged that the way to create a natural red or pink dye is to incorporate beets - their juice has been used as a dye for wool for many years... and is notorious for lending those same properties to countertops, cutting boards, and fingers. To make eggs a bright, poppy pink, we added two cups of grated beets to the water before boiling.
Natural Yellow Due Recipe
We love tumeric - the Indian spice is known for giving many curries a rich colour, and the same warm yellow can be used to dye frosting for cookies. The spice can also be used to give eggs a vibrant, springy hue - simply add four tablespoons of tumeric to the water solution prior to boiling.
Greens, purples, bright oranges...
Many of the solutions listed above are perfect for making solid, primary - coloured eggs; if you want to get creative with your dying, try mixing ingredients - adding tumeric to the cabbage solution, for example, can create a green dye, whereas adding a bit of cabbage to the beet solution will create a lovely lavender shade.
A final note:
Thr richness of your dye depends on the amount of time you leave the egg submerged in the solution; if you want a bold, loud colours, we recommend placing the eggs directly into the bowl and refrigerating overnight. If you're looking for more muted, pale colours, dunkin the eggs for 2-5 minutes generally does the trick.