Naturally Dyed Eggs Go Ombre

Remember these colorful beauties from last year?

We had a ton of fun trying different “recipes” and seeing the amazing colors that emerged. But when all was said and done, I was really partial to the cabbage dyed aqua eggs. I loved how they really picked up the uniqueness of each egg, and the color varied depending on how long they were left in the dye.

So this year I wanted to do a bunch of eggs, all in the cabbage dye.  We boiled our cabbage, dropped the eggs in, put it in the fridge, and waited. And waited. And waited. After about an hour, my 3 year old decided that our eggs were done. At that point, they had just begun to turn a nice robin’s egg blue, but weren’t even close to the deep aqua I love. So we compromised. I told her we could take 1 egg out every hour(ish). It was a fun experiment to see each egg come out darker than the last. And as we pulled out one egg after another, I realized that this was even better than leaving them all in the dye for the same amount of time, because we were left with a lovely assortment of varying shades of aqua.

To make this color I boiled half of a purple cabbage, chopped, in a few cups of water for about an hour, or until all of the color had left the cabbage. After the liquid had cooled, I drained the cabbage, reserving the liquid in a large bowl. I added about 2 tablespoons of white vinegar, and a dozen eggs. I put the whole bowl in the refrigerator and let it sit there for the next day, puling out an egg every hour or so. (Be sure to check out the rest of the color recipes here.)

This was a fun project, but the waiting was really hard for my 3 year old. She was excited to look at all of the eggs at the end, and play with lining them up and sorting them according to color. But the amount of time it takes to dye eggs naturally to deep colors is sometimes too much for little kids. If you are looking for a way to make egg dying more interactive and fun for the little ones be sure to check out my post over on Modern Parents Messy Kids about painting eggs with watercolors.  It was a huge hit in our house! Now I am trying to figure out a way to do that with my natural dye…

This makes such beautiful eggs, I might just have to make it a regular thing at our house.  Why reserve these lovely eggs for just Easter time?

More Easter egg decorating ideas: