3 Simple Ways to Dye Easter Eggs So They Come Out Looking Great
The kids wanted to make “really special Easter eggs” and I hadn’t particularly planned for really special, you know…
Luckily, I knew enough not to let on about my lack of Easter Egg Specialness planning. Instead, I quickly grabbed a couple more household items to add to our decorating arsenal and I was able to impress them with my Easter Egg Dyeing Prowess.
Here are a few easy-peasy tricks so that you too can make simple but beautiful Easter eggs. Really special Easter eggs.
And, for what it’s worth, it’s only in the past couple years that we have started to manage making pretty eggs. Before that we had two years where the kids dyed ALL the eggs pinkish-brown because they had to dip them in EVERY color – so that was a fun experience because we at least DID dye eggs together, and they were just as much fun to hunt for on Easter morning.
3 Beautiful and Simple Ways to Dye Easter Eggs
For these eggs we used a simple [easyazon_link identifier=”B004R1AS0K” locale=”US” tag=”holidea-20″]Easter Egg Dye Kit[/easyazon_link]. (Amazon affiliate link.)
Wrapping in Rubber Bands
Rubber bands make an interesting resist for the dye and the wavy shapes they make on the eggs are graceful and fun to reveal when the eggs dry. You can see two rubber band eggs in the picture below – one in the upper right corner and one bottom center.
Make Repeating Patterns
You can draw on an egg with crayon before dyeing it to make a resist, or course. One of the simple secrets to making it look pretty is to choose a pattern and repeat it all over the egg – spirals, dashes, dots; it doesn’t have to be complex. Our brains like repetition. The spirals above were simple, but it wound up being one of my favorite eggs.
Layer Colors
We dyed some of our eggs and let them dry for a while and THEN colored on them with crayon or wrapped them in rubber bands. This gave us a layered effect. For instance the purple egg with blue dots started as a dyed blue egg. Then we drew dots with a white crayon, then dipped it in pink – TA DAH! A purple egg with blue dots!
Happy Egg Dyeing!
I hope you have fun. And if your child’s simple way to dye Easter Eggs happens to be to make them all Pinkish Brown, well, good thing the Easter Bunny knows how to hide those too 😉
You might also enjoy Creative Easter Basket Ideas.
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Hi Alissa,
This looks like a lot of fun! Please can you help me get started – I have never dyed eggs before.
Do you cook the eggs before you start? And then what do you use as the actual dye?
Thanks,
Julia from New Zealand
Alissa, try this idea. When you are ready to make devilled eggs out of your cooked colored eggs, peel them, cut them in half and remove the yolks; set these aside for the filling. Prepare cups of dye (again!) and place the egg white halves in the dye and leave there for about 5 minutes. Remove from the dye onto a paper towel. Prepare the filling using the egg yolks and whatever recipe you usually use for that. Place filling in the now colorful egg halves and arrange on a serving plate. Voila! Colorful devilled eggs! The kids will love them. Have fun!
Hi Alissa,
this is how you get green eggs:
Buy some Mate-tea (loose leaf, a cheap one will do). Put 1 Tablespoon of mate tea in a pot of cold water (just as much water as you normally need when boiling eggs). Let it soak for half an hour. Bring it to a boil, then add your eggs and cook them for 10 – 12 minutes (mate tea still in the water). Voilà: green. And it’s a nice grassy green (but that may depend on the kind of mate tea you get). Have fun!
Tine from Germany.
I like your blog!
Tine, danke viel mals! Will try your trick with the mate, I hadn’t heard that recipe before!
The pinkish-brown eggs remind me of the amazing BROWN!!! eggs I dyed one year with onion skins. I haven’t had much luck with natural dyes…
Natural dyes are tricky aren’t they? We did natural dyes at my mom’s house one year and they came out really pretty actually, but we couldn’t really get a green (of all things, you’d think green would be an easier natural color…), but the blue from the cabbage was wonderful.
We just did natural dye for our scout meeting. The blueberries turned out a vibrant blue. We were able to get a really pretty green buy mixing the red cabbage with the turmeric. Smelled and looked awful but gave the girls green.