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Making All Natural Easter Egg Dye is a fun and different way to color your Easter eggs. Discover all the beautiful colors you can get from things in your refrigerator.
Creating your own natural Easter egg dyes is a little bit more work than using the store bought dyes from the local grocery store but the colors you can create are beautiful and it is a fun science experiment for the kids.
Using fruits, vegetables and spices it is fun to see what colors they create.
how to dye eggs naturally
You can find just about everything you need in your produce department. The things I have had the best luck with are:
Blue Eggs – 2 cups red cabbage
Green Eggs – 2 cups red onion skins
Blue Gray Eggs – 1 cup blueberries
Orange Eggs – 2 Tbsp paprika will give you a light or 2 cups yellow onion skins will be more gold.
Yellow Eggs – 2 Tbsp turmeric
Pink Eggs – 1 beet
Salt
White Vinegar
A few things that didn’t work well were carrot tops and spinach. It was difficult to get a decent green color. They may have worked better if we had been more patient and let the eggs soak longer. Surprisingly red onion gives you somewhat of a green color!
Feel free to experiment with whatever produce you have on hand.
How to color eggs with natural dyes
For each dye:
- Place 2 cups of water into a pan on the stovetop.
- Add 1 tsp of salt.
- Place each ingredient into the pan and bring the water to a boil, and then let it continue to boil for 10 to 15 minutes.
- Strain the water from the pot and place it in a jar or bowl. Add 1 Tbsp white vinegar and allow to cool.
- Once cooled, you are ready to use your dye!
- Pour all the dyes into small plastic cups and use plastic spoons to take the eggs in and out of the cups.
- I wrote the name of what each one was on the plastic cups as well as on the table. (You will want to cover your table with plastic and or paper because this can get a bit messy!)
How to Hard Boil Eggs
Of course you will need hard boiled eggs too! My favorite way to hard boil eggs is in my Instant Pot. It is so easy and you will never do it any other way once you try it! Find my Instant Pot Hard Boiled Egg directions here.
how to get the best color on easter eggs
Natural dyes do not dye as quickly or as strongly as store bought dye so you need to have patience if you want brighter colors. But I personally love the softer more muted colors you get. For really bright colors you may need to leave it in the dye for an hour or more. Most of ours were only left in for 5 minutes or so. The longer they soak the more color they will absorb.
I think the colors are gorgeous! The blues we got from the blueberries were my favorite.
Check out more fun Easter Ideas:
Natural Easter Egg Dye Recipe
Natural Easter Egg Dye Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 chopped beet
- 2 C red onion skins
- 2 C yellow onion skins
- 2 Tbsp paprika
- 2 Tbsp turmeric
- 1 C blueberries
- 2 C red cabbage
- water
- salt
- white vinegar
Instructions
- Place each ingrredient into 2 C of water along with 1 tsp salt.
- Bring water to a boil and then boil for 10-15 minutes.
- Strain the water and place in a jar or bowl and add 1 Tbsp white vinegar to each dye.
- Allow them to cool before using.
Nutrition Facts:
Sheila Roberts says
Do you have a printer friendly setting for this recipe?
Leigh Anne says
Sheila, Since it is technically not a recipe I don’t but I guess I could but the directions in recipe form.
Will work on that.
Sheila Roberts says
Mixing the blue dyes with the yellow should give you a green or some sort.
Blueberry and tumeric in your choices.
Leigh Anne says
Brillant!!
erin says
I made green by doing turmeric and then into the red cabbage. for some reason the red cabbage was making the eggs a bluish teal.
loved doing this!
vicki says
We have planned the same activity for tomorrow. Last month we talked about media and let the girls make popcorn balls. They were so cute, as they started making the popcorn balls they all started singing a favorite Primary song….Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree!!! Thanks for sharing your ideas.
Leigh Anne says
Hope your girls have much fun with it as we did!
Marm says
I used to do activity days with the Primary girls too. I loved it. They are so eager and fun at that age. You do such fun activities with them. I’m sure they have a great time and learn stuff too.
Lisa says
Sister Wilkes,
The blues and greens are what we get out of our chicken coop, along with a pink, tan, and a light brown. We don’t die our eggs, and my kids refuse to let me buy some from the store. When we do die them, I just use food coloring and vinegar. We made pink eggs out of our pink, tan and brown eggs , then blue eggs out of our green eggs when we announced baby number eight which was grandchild number 24, we put the eggs in order of birth for the grand kids and asked everyone to list the names I order, when grandma was almost done, because she knows all the dates, we slipped the last blue egg in.. Grandpas eyes got all wide.. My BIL asked my hubby’s sister if she was pg, she said she wouldn’t have someone else announce for him…. When all the sisters, SILs and Grandma realized it got crazy loud!
My mom was there as well and almost passed out! I was 20 weeks and I wasn’t showing. First time ever for that. It was awesome! And then we had deviled eggs with dinner.
So now you know even naturally colored eggs can be dyed.
Lisa says
Forgot to say, we made it into a game, all the eggs, except number 24, were in an egg carton. We had everyone list the grand kids in order of birth, and we gave the. A hint by putting the. In order with the kids’ first initial in each egg.
Leigh Anne says
What a fun thing to do. Next time I will use some colored eggs when I do it!
lacy says
Just get some Americauna chickens & you won’t have to dye them at all! Fresh Easter colored eggs all year round! 😉