I haven’t dyed Easter eggs in years, but its a tradition I wanted to bring back, so this weekend I experimented with natural easter egg dye and plants to beautify my Easter eggs!  As a kid I loved staying up the night before Holy Saturday to prepare the eggs in all of our favorite colors. My mom would always help me and my sisters prepare our Easter baskets for blessing in church. The next day we’d proudly bring our baskets to church and meet up with my cousins for endless picture taking.

My favorite color is blue and after doing some research found out that red cabbage (who knew!) can be used to make this beautiful color! If you’re interested, you can use other foods for different colors — turmeric for yellow, beets for pink, etc.

I can’t believe how easy the dye was to make. For the entire project, you need the following:

Natural Easter Egg Dye Supplies

• 1 quart of water
• Hard boiled eggs (duh)
• One head of red cabbage
• 1 tablespoon vinegar
• 1 tablespoon salt
• Plants for decorating (I used dill sprigs and some leaves from a mint plant I have)
• Nylons
• Rubber bands

Directions

To make the dye, shred the red cabbage (it’s a super fun and easy vegetable to chop). Add this to a large pot and add the water, vinegar, and salt. Boil the contents and then cover everything to simmer for 30 minutes. That’s it! From here you will strain the cabbage and the cabbagey water that’s left over is your dye. It doesn’t’ smell very good – but it’s a very deep purple.

To create your plant designs,  chop up some old nylons (I used white ones from an old Halloween costume, I promise they were clean!) and wrap the eggs with whatever plant you choose. You can use all kinds of plants — they just have to be on the small side. I thought using dill and some mint leaves would work since that’s what I already had in the house. But during my research I saw people using grass, flower petals, feathers, rice —  anything really!

Wrap your plant sprigs around the eggs and then place them in your nylon and secure tightly with a rubber band. Make sure its tight! After that all you have to do is leave the eggs in the cabbage dye. The main difference with natural dye as opposed to the tablet dye I used as a kid, is that that natural dye works slower. You can’t just dip the egg into the dye for five minutes and take it out. You have to really soak the eggs for a few hours to get the color you want, but it does work! I did mine for three hours and got a pale robin’s egg blue. If I had left the eggs in overnight I think I would have had a very deep shade of blue.

I was really skeptical as to if this would work because I was worried that the leaves would move around while in the dye and not leave an imprint. To my shock – my eggs turned out super pretty! See my results below – I can’t wait to put these in my Easter basket !

I made six eggs total, the four below were my favorite. The dill had a marble like effect on the egg, while the peppermint leaves turned out the best.

I hope some of you find time during this busy Holy week to try this out ! Let me know how it works out for you and if you tried any other natural dyes to make your favorite colors.