Until I found myself in a foreign country with no Easter egg dyeing kits, I really had no idea you could just use food coloring. In fact, I didn’t even look online to see if someone else had tried it before I made up my own “recipe”. Surely if it was so easy to just use food coloring, everyone would do it!
Those Paas kits are only $1, but using food coloring is even cheaper. It’s basically free, since you probably already have food coloring and it just takes a couple drops. Maggie just turned four and was able to do the entire process on her own with really no mess. Though, as you can see, we have black countertops. If you aren’t so lucky, lay down newspaper first.
In a bowl, mix:
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- 3 drops food coloring (we used McCormick neon colors)
Dip your eggs (hard boiled or empty shells) in and let them sit as long as you like. Maggie put an undetermined number of drops of purple food coloring in when my back was turned, so that dye worked immediately. The other colors just took a minute or two.
She wanted to paint some polka dotted Easter eggs, so I grabbed a birthday candle off the shelf for her to use. It worked well, but perhaps a q-tip might work better.
We put the dyed eggs back into the carton to dry. So easy, so fast, and so cheap.
Love the Ikea cups!:)
If you want the colors to come out with a deeper hue or just different than what the regular white ones produce, use the brown eggs. They color soo beautifully. No one ever thinks of using them.
another awesome easy and pretty much free thing to do is take a white crayon, or colored if thats your thing, and draw some dots or other design on the eggs b4 you dye them. the dye wont go where the wax crayon is.
My girls and I have always dyed our eggs using food coloring. One cool thing to try is to allow them to color on the eggs with crayons first. The dye doesnt adhere to the wax of the crayon!!!!
another really easy, inexpensive way to dye easter eggs (or paper for that matter) is with food coloring and shaving cream. Just put a pile of shaving cream on a paper plate and drop a few drops of food coloring on it. Stir is all together and roll the egg through it. Wipe off the excess, and voila! a dry, dyed easter egg! If you want a marble affect, you can simply run a pencil, knife blade or toothpick through the drop of dye and swirl it instead of completely mixing it in with all the shaving cream. You can even use a couple of different colors. If you want to do paper, you spread the shaving cream out more and then set the paper down on it flat and drag it across the top of the shaving cream and then wipe the paper off with paper towels. Smells nice too!
When I was a child, and there weren’t commerical egg dye kits, my mother secretly made beautiful “marbled” easter egges – beautiful colors swirled around. We never did find out how she did it. I do know oil and vinegar were part of the process. Does anyone know how this “old fashioned” way of coloring eggs was done?
How to make Marble Colored Eggs:
– 1 to 2 dozen white eggs
– food coloring
– white vinegar
– olive oil
– large needle
– egg blower (optional)
Depending on what you will do with the decorated egg, you can use hard-boiled eggs or “empty” eggs for this project.
Emptying the eggs: Gently pierce the fat end of the egg with a large needle; wiggle it around to create a larger hole, being careful not to crack the shell. Make another hole in the opposite end and insert the needle to break the yolk. (This makes the egg easier to blow out.) Put your mouth over the narrow end of the egg and blow the contents into a bowl. Rinse and let dry.
My mother did this when we was kids! Nothing like it.
I save the rubberbands from vegetables and use them on the eggs. Make sure the band is tight, let the egg sit in the dye as long as desired, remove the bands and the covered stripes remain white. Dip in another color if desired.
Here is also a site to make some beautiful Easter Eggs of different kinds!
Easter Eggs – How to Decorate and Display Easter Eggs – Quick & Simple
http://www.quickandsimple.com
For a fun addition to your Easter dinner that is sure to impress your guests, make colored deviled eggs. Just peel the hardboiled eggs before coloring them. I arrange mine on a two-tiered egg server decorated with plastic chicks and bunnies, a pretty bow and some foil wrapped chocolate eggs.