I'm rather fond of seeing our eggs au naturel - there's such variation in color with each one, and oh those great big and white duck eggs! But my little ones have been noticing the calendar and changing season and asking when, oh, when Mama are we going to dye eggs?
Of course! We did so this weekend, and we kept it simple, as that always works best when all six of us are planning on doing the same thing. I hard boiled the eggs. We did some coloring (with beeswax crayons) on them, and some elastics were applied. And we dyed with what we had on hand - lots of beets, some turmeric, coffee (onions are great too), and a little bit of this dye for the blue (because I couldn't part with my last bags of frozen blueberries). (Generally speaking, 2 cups of dye matter, 4 cups of water and 2 tablespoons of white vinegar, all boiled together for 15 minutes or so. Then cool. Or not, if you're too impatient to wait, as we all clearly were.) Some we just dipped, some we soaked for a long time, some we double dipped. And then we set them all out to cool. (The ones we planned on eating will be kept in the fridge, others decided theirs are decorative only.)
Oh, and the fabric strips are just sheets of muslin, torn into long strips. We dyed those just the same way as the eggs, in anticipation of a little spring May Day maypole celebration. I love how vibrant the colors are on the fabric! It's going to be one colorful maypole....
If you're looking for more Spring & Easter egg goodness, some links for you today:
These watercolor easter eggs are lovely.
Stephanie's elastics inspired us.
Mother Earth News has a good tutorial for natural egg dyeing.
Martha's recipe is also quite simple.
These eggs are gorgeous too.
These, too, are the colors of spring!
