The rumor has it that Easter Bunny started following the trend of sustainability and bringing along some neatly colours this year!  There are many ways to dye your eggs completely natural way, sometimes even using home produced ingredients – without artificial dyes you may have not thought of!

 

Easter is a perfect time to get creative and impress the whole family – and especially yourself – with new innovative ideas how to dye the eggs.  There is an incredible amount of decorating them but we are focusing on the natural ones – the ancient and forgotten trend that is becoming more and more popular lately!

 

General procedure

• Bring a combination of water and vinegar to the boil. The ratio should be 2 tablespoons of vinegar per 1 liter of water. Feel free to adjust the quantity  of this mixture depending on your pot and the amount of eggs you want to boil.
• Add the ”dye ingredients” listed below – depending on the desired color and/or the pattern
• Simmer on low heat; this normally takes between 5-30 minutes
• Let it cool and strain it; tip your still warm hard boiled eggs in it.

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Colors

Yellow

Add 3 big tablespoons of turmeric per liter of boiling water. Simmer for cca 20-30 minutes
Advice: wear rubber gloves while doing that, turmeric can be nasty to clean off your hands and fingernails

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Baby Blue

You will need one cup (2,5 dl) of frozen blueberries or at least 6 teabags of blueberry tea. Simmer for 5-6 minutes, remove from the heat and let the eggs in until they are the color you want.
Advice: It works well with other sorts of tea as well

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Brown

The very traditional, easy and beautiful style are the onion dyed eggs!
Take at least one handful of onion peels and boil simmer it for cca 30 minutes

 

 

 

Red

Minimum of 0,5 litre of chopped red beet submerged in the water will do the trick and dye your eggs dark red to deep purple. Simmer for at least 15 minutes

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Blue

Boil one head of red cabbage for 30 minutes and submerge your eggs in for at least an hour. For a deeper colour let it work for at least 2 hours.

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My personal favourite: Boiled in wine

 

Not only this colour is beyond beautiful, it also adds this wine stone glittery touch to it!
Choose a good wuality wine, preferably home-made (it has to leave a trace on the glass), submerge your unboiled eggs and boil them slowly for 10 minutes. Remove them from the heat and let them stay in wine overnight. Let them air dry in the morning. The eggs may have a light wine taste afterwards, but there is no alcohol in them, so it is also safe for the kids!

 

 

Additional tips:

• The best results are achieved with white eggs
• Vinegar is essential, it makes the dye stick to an egg shell!
• Once dyed, let your eggs air dry overnight. That will prevent your dye to peel off
• If you want the dye to get deeper and darker, polish them with oil after dying
• You can use the skin of a red onion as well

 

Creating patterns

It is very simple to add a little life to your eggs – simply collect the weeds and the flowers and tye them tightly on the eggs with a nylon sock!

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Enjoy the procedure and have plenty of fun eating all the Easter food!

 

Don’t miss the crazy Easter discount at Oslo Hostel Haraldsheim! 

 

 

Written by Sandra Meglić, an EVS volunteer
Funded by Erasmus+ and Aktiv Ungdom