I finally got to a project I've been wanting to try for about fifteen years!
I created home-made botanical dyes for my Easter eggs.
I used a cold dye process (hard boil eggs first, make dyes and cool them, then add eggs to dye jars with a bit of vinegar, soak for an hour).
 |
| Hard boil 3 dozen eggs |
Assemble materials, including white vinegar, frozen blueberries, paprika, turmeric, grape juice, cabbage, beets, parsley, onions...and I added spinach and coffee at the last minute.
Start cooking! Throw chopped materials into a pot with 4 cups water. I used 3 tablespoons of the spices. Simmer for 30 minutes.
 |
| Yellow onion, paprika, grape juice, blueberries. |
 |
| Cabbage, beets, turmeric, parsley. |
After simmering for 30 minutes, allow the dyes to cool, and then strain them into mason jars. When you're ready to dye the eggs, add a couple teaspoons of white vinegar to the dye cups/jars.
 |
| Mad Scientists! |
I let the eggs soak for 30-60 minutes, and then spread them out on a paper towel to dry. They dried overnight, and some of the colors faded a bit. The cold dye process gets some cool speckled textures and variations in color.
The only failure was green. I added spinach to the parsley pot, but I still did not get a lot of pigment in the solution. Not sure why. Maybe I needed more than two bunches of parsley! I added a drop of food coloring to the green to perk it up (yeah, I know, that's cheating! Hee hee.)
The yellow onion skins made a fabulous super rich orange color, and the cabbage made a gorgeous blue that got deeper if you extended the dye time. Those were my favorites.
Finished products look amazing!
This was a super fun project, and I will definitely try it again next year, maybe with different materials.
HAPPY SPRING!
Love, Nina/Penny
Posts
