***Natural Easter Egg Dyes ***

This Easter you might want to try something a little different for dying eggs. Many things can be used besides commercial dyes.

Yellow Boil yellow onionskins for bright yellow eggs. Red skins can also be
used. Turmeric also makes yellow eggs.

Pink to Blue
Beet and grape juice produce pinkish to blue eggs.

Blue
The most fun is boiling red cabbage. It makes almost a robin's egg blue. Unsweetened Kool-Aid will also stain well or crushed blueberries

Crimson
fresh beets

Copper
yellow onion skins

Green
spinach, fresh or frozen

Yellow
marigolds

If you are buying eggs for dying, try to obtain local farm eggs. They are not treated with oil, as are the commercial eggs, and take the dye much better.

To make Ukrainian eggs, you dip the egg in strong colored dyes, and cover your design in wax. The contents are not blown out, but left to dry and rattle. There is no odor.

You can make "wooden appearing" eggs, also leaving the contents in, or hard boiling the eggs. You leave the contents in so the egg doesn't float. Make a solution of very strong coffee and place the eggs in it. Set your container in an out of the way place. As the coffee evaporates, it makes rings on the eggs. It's like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get! Friends who have made them report no odor, either way, however I wouldn't let a toddler break one, either.