Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

The start of most of our activities begin with an inspiration. This time it was a post about naturally dyed Easter eggs. I saved the link, in hopes to try it for the upcoming Easter. Miraculously, my adhd-mom- brain remembered the post when Easter came around, and we gave it a try. These turned out beautifully and I’ll share our process so you can do it too!

First, I gathered inspiration from other posts about what to use for our base ingredients to infuse the most color. The most common elements readily available to us included: beets, turmeric, purple cabbage, red and yellow onion skins, and blueberries. Easy enough, we had most of these ingredients already at home. But next, my toddler and I decided to do a nature scavenger hunt for more colors! Would violets make purple eggs? What about dandelions? Would they make yellow?

After collecting our ingredients, I prepared approximately 2 cups of each one. Then we boiled each veggie or spice separately in 2 cups of water for 15-30 minutes. After boiling, strain out the food, and you have a base dye. For every one cup of liquid, add one Tablespoon of distilled white vinegar. Here came the fun part: it was time to dip our eggs and try different combinations of dyes to get different colors!

For lighter/pastel colors we tried one dip. But for deeper hues and more variations, we left some of our eggs overnight in jars:

The next day we checked our batch of eggs, and they turned out so well! The alternate base ingredients we used to make color variations not shown in the picture were: violets, dandelions, parsley, grass (I mean, why not?), and paprika. But for the most part, the ones listed here gave us the deepest colors:

I didn’t use filters, so you could see a realistic view of just how brightly colored they turned out! I love this natural, non-toxic way to dye our eggs. My toddler also really enjoyed getting to brainstorm ideas for colors- which I’m sure he’ll still enjoy for a few more years hopefully. I encourage you to give this a try!