All you need is eggs, veggies, and spices! These cold bath dyeing recipes are very simple and kid-friendly. Hard-boil eggs using your normal recipe or our recipe!
1. To hard boil, bring a pot of water to a boil.
2. Once the water is at a rolling bowl, gently at the eggs and boil 5 minutes.
3. Then remove the eggs and place them in an ice bath until cool.
4. Done!
National Co-op Grocers sent out a fantastic guide that is easy to follow to dye eggs: https://www.welcometothetable.coop/food-lifestyle/cooking/naturally-dyed-eggs. For white and light green eggs all the colors will work. If you have brown eggs, stick to the darker colors like purple, blue, green, and black tea. We used brown, green, and white eggs and the cold bath method;
1. Choose your dyeing ingredients. We used turmeric, onion skins, black tea bags, purple cabbage, spirulina, and pomegranate juice.
2. Measure out your ingredients and boil in a pot of water. We made about 2 cups of each dye, which needed; 4 tea bags, 3 onion’s skins, 2 tbsp turmeric, 2 tbsp spirulina, and 1/2 a small cabbage. Boil your ingredients for about 30 minutes, the longer you boil, the brighter the colors will get!
3. Next, you need some art supplies. We used rubber bands, a small piece of cheesecloth, some beeswax (or a crayon), grains (rice), and leaves and flowers from our garden!
4. Decorate your eggs however you like, wrap in cheesecloth if needed, tie closed with rubber bands or string, and leave in the dye for about 30 minutes.
Our cheesecloth are plastic, as opposed to the cotton or linen ones. Thus, it made a design on our eggs. Cotton or linen cheesecloth should not have any effect on the design!
Bottom, Left to Right: Pomegranate Juice, Tumeric, Purple Cabbage
Written by Madison Suoja, Education and Outreach Specialist