Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

Easter is my favorite holiday and my favorite Easter activity is dyeing eggs. It is a tradition in my home to dye eggs every year and snack on them Easter morning before our big dinner. While perusing my usual go-to blogs and websites, I came across a post from Lauren Conrad explaining how she experimented with dyeing eggs naturally. With the trend of going organic and consuming and using natural products on the rise, I thought this was a great idea to share!

People prefer most things in their lives to be natural rather than artificial (think food, makeup, and even cleaning supplies), so this creative idea really caught my eye. It’s a unique twist on your traditionally dyed Easter eggs, only using foods, spices, and plants. Here is how Lauren Conrad went natural with her eggs!

Supplies

• Eggs
• Red onion
• White onion
• Saffron
• Purple cabbage
• Whole carrots (with stems)
• Blueberries
• Beets

Instructions

1. Hard boil eggs in water.
2. Add each ingredient to 2 cups of water and boil it for about 10-15 minutes. Let them cool to about room temp. (This speeds up the dyeing process and makes the water a more saturated color.)
3. Soak an egg in each cup of water to dye, like you would normally dye eggs. Lauren Conrad did several versions of each egg, varying the time she let them soak. For example, she had three saffron eggs soaking and took one out at an hour, one out at two hours, and one out at three hours to get different levels of saturation.
4. Take your eggs out of the dye when you feel they’ve reached the desired color.

Tip: Dyes like saffron and cabbage worked quickly (only a few minutes), and others like carrot tops and beets took hours. 

Saffron 

 

Blueberries 

 

Red Onion 

 Make sure you set aside a good couple of hours before starting this project as it is rather time consuming. You can really devour the details of this Easter activity by making it your own and turning it into kind of a science experiment; mixing different dyes, letting some eggs soak longer than others, and even discovering how to create a marbleized and other unique looks. It is a fun way to continue a tradition but with your health in mind. I hope to try this out when I dye my eggs this Easter!