Naturally Dyed Easter Eggs

Last year we spent the spring in Europe traveling around. While we were in Switzerland, I kept seeing these beautiful brown and deep purple Easter eggs with imprints of leaves on them. They were so much prettier than the brightly colored Easter eggs I’m used to in America and I knew that I had to recreate them.

After doing some research, I learned that you get that beautiful brown color by using yellow onion skins to make dye. I’m all about using natural ingredients in the home and I knew that you could dye fabric with natural dyes but I had never realized you could dye eggs with them.

I used these instructions from The Kitchn to make my dyes. For blue, I used purple cabbage. For yellow, I used ground turmeric. For brown, I used yellow onion skins. For red/purple, I used red beets.

I gathered different herbs and weeds from the garden to make the imprints on the eggs. I read that using cilantro and parsley is pretty common in Europe but I just used whatever I already had in the garden. Using a pair of tights that I cut up, I carefully placed the leaves on the egg and used the tights to secure them in place. I tied a knot then filled the rest of the tight with more eggs.

Since I used eggs from our chickens that are all different colors, it was a bit of an experiment to see how the dye would transfer to the colored eggs. I was pleasantly surprised by the result. I let my eggs sit in the dye for about 2 hours. If you’re using white eggs, I don’t think you’ll need that long. The color on the eggs turned out so earthy and vibrant and I think they look much better than neon colored eggs :)

After the eggs dried for a few minutes, I rubbed a little bit of avocado oil on them to make them shiny and help seal the color.

I think this will become a yearly tradition!