How to make your own Easter Eggs With natural dyes
How to make your own natural easter eggs | Free Downloadable Easter Card |
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Giving and receiving Easter eggs is synonymous
with Easter time as they signify new life and rebirth. Although the name 'Easter egg' has now been given to brightly coloured eggs given as gifts, we are certainly not the first civilisation to give such eggs as presents. In fact eggs were given out in pre christian times, the ancient Egyptians and Persians used to give them out to friends as a symbol of renewed life. The name Easter itself is thought to derive from Oestar, a goddess of Spring and renewal.
One of my favourite myths surrounding easter is the Polish legend, on the first Good Friday a man was taking a basket of eggs to market to sell. On the way he put the basket down and ran to help Christ carry the cross. When he returned, the eggs were decorated in beautiful colours and designs.
How to make your own natural Easter egg's
Obviously the first thing that you will need is an egg,free range chicken, duck, emu eggs whatever they all do the same job.
What you will need
Eggs
Stickers or sticky tape
Vegetable matter
Saucepan
Measuring Jug
White Wine Vinegar
You have two choices in how you prepare your egg for dying, the most frugal is to pierce a hole in each end and blow out the yoke into a bowl for use in a recipe. Get a needle and pearce the top of an egg repeat this piercing in the same place until you have a hole about the size of the a on your @ key. Repeat on the other end. Now over a bowl gently blow and the raw egg will flow out, keep blowing until the egg is empty.
The other option for a more sturdy egg is to hard boil it.
Below is a list of some of the colours that can obtained for various different plants. It could be interesting to experiment with some of your own. Is there anything in your garden that is brightly coloured you perhaps could get a workable dye from?
Pale green - Spinach Leaves
Orange - Yellow Onion skins and Chili powder
Red - Cranberries, Fresh Beetroot and frozen raspberries
Brown - Dill seeds
Blue - Red Cabbage leaves
Yellow - Orange or lemon peels, carrot tops, celery seed, ground cumin and ground turmeric, fresh green comfrey plant
Rich Blue - Woad leaves
Copper - Red Onion skins
Greeny Gray - Whole Nettle plants
Pink - Sorrel Roots
To obtain a workable dye from the above substances put two handfuls of stuff into a saucepan. Cover with more than enough water and bring to the boil. Bring down the heat and simmer until you get the colour that you are looking
for. This will take anything from 15 minutes to about an hour.
Strain the mixture and put into a mixing bowl adding 3 teaspoons of white wine vinegar per half pint (1 cup,237ml) of mixture.
To get the dye on the eggs you have to immerse them in the dye colour. If you would like some pattern on the eggs then stick the stickers on them and peel off when the egg is cool. If you are feeling adventurous then put stickers around the egg in stripes. Peel off the stickers and cover over where the dye was and immerse in the liquid again. Ensure that the tape or stickers is flush to the egg other wise dye will seep underneath and ruin the effect. You can also scratch patterns onto the egg when the dye is still wet.
The eggs should be kept in the hot liquid until you are happy with the colour. As the water is hot please use a spoon or something to take them in and out, I did not when trying this out and got quite a shock!
The colour will be a bit dull so if you want to brighten them up a bit brush some olive oil over them.
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