Natural dyes for Easter eggs - from ingredients you have in your pantry

Easter!

Easter is just around the corner! This means preparing supplies, strengthening the gluteal muscles to handle the load of merciless pom poms, but most importantly coloring Easter eggs.

And how about celebrating Easter this year in a more reasonable and natural style? For most children, this holiday is mainly about a bunch of sweets, which they can squeeze a few days a year with the permission of mom and dad, because it is Easter after all. :) But it doesn't have to be like that! How to emphasize the meaning of Easter, instead of a fairy tale, tell the child in the evening what Easter actually is and why it is celebrated, but perhaps also entice him to bake some healthy snacks (for example homemade muesli sticks with nuts and dried fruit) and creation... For example, when coloring Easter eggs, which is a wonderful opportunity to spend time together.

No more bags full of bright colors

You no longer need to buy colored bags with artificial dyes every year, which will give your egg an incredibly bright color, but in addition to the not-so-natural content values, you will also find other disadvantages. Every year, after using these egg dyes, you must have had to press hard on the sponge to get the accidentally dripped dye off the snow-white kitchen counter...

Well, you can let go of such worries with natural egg dyeing. In addition, natural dyeing of eggs is much more imaginative than simply pouring the contents of a bag into vinegar water. You have to play with this a bit, so you will definitely tempt your little one to do such a fun and creative activity!

But let it catch!

It's clear that we all want the egg dye to stick as well as possible. We have two pieces of advice for you.

First - and this probably won't surprise you - try to scare away the egg whites . We are not always lucky enough to get them, but with white eggs we are much more successful. We didn't manage to do it during the photoshoot, so the eggs are caught in earthy tones instead of softer, pastel and spring-themed ones. We definitely don't care!

Secondly, degrease each egg well before dyeing, just soak a small cloth in vinegar and clean the whole egg with it. The color will stick better to a properly degreased egg and you will also avoid unnecessary uneven lighter spots that usually appear on dyed eggs. It is probably not possible to pick up all of them completely, but some of these stains are caused by grease, which can be nicely reduced with a vinegar cloth.

And before we get down to the whole thing, we can't forgive ourselves a small note - if for you very expressive or flashy colors are a necessity for Easter, then natural dyeing of eggs probably won't fulfill your expectations. With natural dyes, it is naturally impossible to achieve such saturated colors as with artificial dyes. The resulting colors are softer, lighter... Well, in short, more natural!

How to do it?

This time, exceptionally, we will talk about the work process first and then the ingredients, since the process will always be almost the same, only the ingredients will change according to the individual colors. In any case, we will always need hard-boiled eggs, vinegar and mason jars.

First, let the raw material selected for dyeing the eggs boil in water. As soon as the mixture starts to boil, turn off the heat and let everything cook for at least 15 minutes, but no more than an hour or two. It depends on how rich a color we want. Some people prefer soft pastel colors - for those, it is enough to cook the mixture for a quarter of an hour to twenty minutes. And logically, the longer you cook the mixture, the darker the color will be. And in our opinion, the best option: we simply leave the ingredients in the pot long enough to be able to use them after cooking - i.e. eat them - we don't waste anything! :)

After the required cooking time, let the mixture cool down to approximately room temperature, then pour it through a strainer or colander into the prepared glass mason jars, in which we will color the eggs. Add at least 1 tablespoon of vinegar to each glass and mix well.

Put the hard-boiled eggs into colored solutions, put them in the fridge and leave them there for at least a few hours. In order to achieve the most intense color possible, we can leave them in the solutions overnight (but we do not recommend this, for example, with beets, in which the eggs tend to turn grey-brown after a long time).

And now the most important question – what colors can we achieve with which raw materials?

PINK gray with beetroot

If you want to have rosy pieces among your eggs, definitely try beetroot!

What does it take?

- 2 cups of peeled and grated beetroot (or a spoonful of dried beetroot)

- 2 cups of water

- 1 to 2 tablespoons of vinegar

BLUE or GREEN with purple cabbage

Brown eggs will catch you in green-blue, white eggs will catch you and they will be beautifully blue.

What does it take?

- 2 cups of finely chopped purple cabbage

- Enough water to cover the cabbage by about 1 centimeter in the pot

- 1 to 2 tablespoons of vinegar

YELLOW with turmeric

Our favorite! Like the sun, the warm color of turmeric can also be used to dye eggs! Turmeric sticks to white eggs perfectly, they will be bright yellow, brown eggs will be more ocher or golden.

What does it take?

- 1 tablespoon of turmeric

- 2 cups of water

- 2 tablespoons of vinegar

ORANGE or WINE with onion

Dyeing Easter eggs with onions is nothing new, you were probably taught by your mothers or grandmothers. But the classic never stops being modern! The color can go from orange to brown, brown eggs are more likely to catch you dark brown, white eggs will be more orange.

What does it take?

- 2 cups onion skins

- Enough water so that the water in the pot exceeds the peel by approximately 1cm

- 1 to 2 tablespoons of vinegar

BLUE with blueberries

While making this coloring, probably no one can resist and take a bite of some juicy blueberry. However, it is better to color white eggs, because this color is not so clear on brown ones. We omitted the blueberry color this year due to too much teething and the lack of white eggs, so don't look for it in the photos .

What does it take?

- 2 cups of fresh blueberries

- 2 cups of water

- 1 to 2 tablespoons of vinegar

VEGETABLES with spinach

With spinach you achieve a kind of greenish color. It's not very expressive, so again - the number one choice is definitely white eggs, on which the color will stand out better.

What does it take?

- 1 spoons of dried spinach / 2 cups of fresh spinach leaves

- 2 cups of water

- 1 to 2 tablespoons of vinegar

Shine like lightning!

Eggs that are dyed with these natural dyes tend to have a sort of dull appearance. However, a beautifully shiny egg looks much better, like an apple. All you have to do is take a little bit of coconut fat between your fingers, help yourself with a small cloth if necessary, and polish the egg beautifully. The carolers are fighting over him!

And what are your favorite natural methods for coloring or decorating eggs?

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