~Make Your Own Natural Easter Egg Dyes ~

   

     Legend has it that every spring a rabbit would visit children’s homes during the night and leave a woven nest with an egg in it as a sign that spring had arrived. Take your children on a hike to search for leaves, pinecones, flowers, grasses and other materials for your basket trimmings. Then, dye eggs naturally with leaves, grasses, spices and other gifts of nature to mimic the variety of colorful eggs made by our wild critters! Your creativity and nature’s colors will give your eggs a special one-of-a-kind design - and they'll be much better for you to eat too!!!

To start hard boil your eggs! After making each dye, the eggs will need to sit in the dye for 5-15 minutes (depending on the depth of color you'd like).

PINK

1 - 15 oz jar of beets

1 c. water

1 t. vinegar

Bring beets and water to a boil, let simmer for 5 minutes. Pour through colander into a bowl to retain the liquid. Cool, then stir in vinegar.

YELLOW

1 T. tumeric or curry powder

2 c. water

Bring spice and water to a boil, let simmer 5 minutes. Cool.

GREEN

1 c. water

3 chlorophyll capsules (or make your own - instructions below)

Bring water to a boil, then remove from heat. Open up capsules and stir contents into water. Cool.

PURPLE

2 c. frozen blueberries

2 c. water

1 t. vinegar

Bring blueberries and water to a boil, let simmer for 5 minutes. Pour through colander into a bowl to retain the liquid. Cool, then stir in vinegar.

BLUE

1/2 head of red cabbage

2 c. water

1 t. vinegar

Bring cabbage and water to a boil, let simmer for 5 minutes. Pour through colander into a bowl to retain the liquid. Cool, then stir in vinegar. NOTE: Eggs will require sitting in this dye for several hours to hold color.

To make your own chlorophyll:

Making the dye out of chlorophyll will require crushing green plant materials to extract the color and putting the plant liquid and solid materials in a glass jar. Place the jar in the sun for a few days and then look at the color. Add water to dilute it and allow it to sit in the sun for a few more days. Pour the plant material into a pan and simmer the material for one hour to extract the color. The liquid should have color while the plant material should have none.