Natural dye easter eggs
Natural dye Easter eggs
Originally uploaded by rosidae.
It's that time of year again when I make my easter eggs. This year I got three other girlie co-workers interested in joining me. They all brought eggs and one also brought leaves and flowers from her own garden.
They are dead simple to make.
Ingredients:
brown onion skins (half a grocery bag-ish of the dry papery stuff)
1/4 Cup white vinegar
raw white eggs (I prefer medium ones)
thin flowers and leaves - the best ones are flat enough to form a good seal
old nylon stockings, cut into squares
twist ties
a little vegetable oil
Directions to make the dye:
Put onion skins into a big kitchen pot, fill pot 1/3 with water or enough to eventually cover eggs by an inch. Bring to boil and simmer for 10 minutes or until the water is dyed a rich red-brown. Stir in vinegar. Set aside while you deal with eggs.
Directions to make the eggs:
Press botanicals against raw eggs and tie in place with the pieces of nylon stockings and twist ties.
Put eggs in the pot of dye and boil as long as you normally would to boil an egg. About 8 minutes.
Remove eggs from pot and when cool enough to handle, remove the nylon and spent botanicals. Rinse gently if the greens stick to the egg. Some botanicals will transfer extra color onto the eggs, but the egg generally will stay white where the botanicals covered them.
Gently rub a *very* small amount of vegetable oil onto the eggs. This makes them shine.
One more pic:
Normally I don't like to post to multiple groups that have a fair amount of cross-over traffic, but I've traditionally posted my easter eggs to the cooking group, so you'll see this in both groups.