Followers

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Natural dyed Easter Eggs

Yesterday we dyed some Easter Eggs and silkies with Natural Dyes.

Some of the colours surprised me! We followed this post from Syrendell, as well as trying some other foods to experiment with since we could not find blackberries or blueberries anywhere!

From top to bottom, left to right:
1) Eggs in Turmeric
2) Eggs in Purple Cabbage
3) Eggs in Beets
4) Eggs in Strawberries
5) Silkie in Turmeric
6)Silkie in Purple Cabbage
7)Silkie in Beets
8) Dinosaur Eggs

We tried boiling some carrots too but there was hardly any colour to the water so we didn't try dying in the carrot water. The beets was a bit of a disappointment as I expected that gorgeous colour that shows above (in picture 3) to remain. However it really just made the eggs look like they were brown eggs and the silkie like a really really pastel pink. The strawberry dyed ones weren't much different from the beets, however that dye did smell the best! We did not dye a silkie in the strawberry after seeing how pale the beets were.

I'm all about the drastic change like the yellow eggs in the turmeric, and the blue eggs from the purple cabbage. I find it very puzzling that the purple cabbage dyed the eggs blue, but the silkie a lavendar colour (see photo 2).
Edited to add: the pink egg above Sierra made at daycare and I will ask them how they made the speckles as iremembersleep inquired and maybe others would like to know too. If you'd like to know, leave me a comment about it and I will send you the details. The eggs with the leaves on them are onion skin dyed eggs.

The Dinosaur eggs in picture 8, were made by using the eggs that cracked in the initial boiling. We cracked them some more and then left them in the dye to set. When the shells are peeled they leave a neat cracked design, which makes hard boiled eggs all that much more fun to eat!

We also dyed some more silkie with some other dye and now have a whole rainbow of silkies. We did a few for the shop too which will be posted when the rain stops so I can get a more accurate photo of the colours.

Overall we really had fun with these and the cabbage afterwards was a yummy treat! There are more pics on my flickr photostream if you'd like to see them.

5 comments:

  1. We dyed some eggs yesterday, with similar results. We also tried spinach, and that didn't work at all. I ended up resorting to food colouring for green, it seems like the most elusive colour.

    I wonder why the eggs and silk take the dye differently? There must be a different protein or something.

    ReplyDelete
  2. beautiful! I wanted to do natural dyes but ran out of time today and we did it the vintage food coloring and vinegar style! Have a wonderful Easter!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Amber: I was reading somewhere before that spinach should work if you boil it for about an hour and leave the eggs to sit in it over night. Not sure if it would work, but worth a try :)

    Mamaroots: I am sure your eggs are beautiful too. Hopefully you'll post some pics when you get a chance.

    Happy Easter everyone!

    ReplyDelete
  4. These were super fun to guess too!
    I did not even think of cabbage.
    It caught me of gard. I love the
    yellow! Glad to see your helper had
    fun making them too! Great photos!
    Loads of love,
    Rane

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment! I love reading them, and visiting your blogs too :)