How to color eggs for Easter with natural and artificial colors

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Use onion peels, turmeric and kale, make ombre, marble and space patterns, transfer designs from fabric.

How to color eggs in onion skins

Onion peels are a simple, cheap, and most importantly, natural remedy for coloring Easter eggs.

With its help, you can get dyes from light brown to rich chocolate color. The shade depends on the quantity and type of onion peel. So, the husk of red onion gives a purple tint.

Even eggs with brown shells are well colored in onion skins.

What do you need

• Onion peel. At least a dozen eggs - a tightly packed half-liter jar. The more, the richer the color will be.
• Water.
• 1 tablespoon of table salt.
• Paper towels.
• Gauze and some vegetable oil.

How to paint eggs

Remove eggs from refrigerator and wash well. They should be at room temperature, so let them sit for a while.

At this time, pour the onion skins into the pan. It is better to take small dishes and paint the eggs in batches so that the onion solution turns out to be rich. Pour boiling water over the husk. The water should completely cover the eggs.

Put on high heat and cook for 40 minutes. You can also first pour cold water over the husk, leave for a couple of hours, and then boil for 10–20 minutes.

When the eggs are warm, gently place them in a saucepan along with the salt. Salt is added so that the eggs do not crack during cooking and coloring.

Sometimes the solution is pre-filtered. Ostensibly to avoid divorce. In fact, the presence or absence of husks in the pan does not affect this.

Boil the eggs in the onion skins for 10–20 minutes. The longer, the richer the color will be. Some housewives turn down the heat and leave the eggs in the solution for an hour or more. It is believed that with a long boil, Easter eggs are stored longer, and they taste like hardened eggs.

Put the dyed eggs on a paper towel, and when cool, rub each with cheesecloth dipped in vegetable oil. This will give the dyes a shine.

What other options are there

When stained with onion skins, eggs can be made even more elegant. For stripes, wrap the eggs with white thread or rubber bands. If you moisten the eggs in water, roll them in rice and wrap them tightly with gauze or nylon, you get a speck. Also, as a stencil, you can take sprigs of parsley and dill, lace, plaster.

Onion hulls can be used to make marble eggs. Thanks to this method of staining, a bizarre pattern with different shades of brown appears on the shell.

Before sending the eggs into a pot with saline, they need to be rolled in onion peels and wrapped with gauze or nylon. The husk is sometimes mixed with finely chopped paper to create white patches on the shell. You can also add brilliant green to the coloring solution to get emerald specks.

How to color eggs with other natural colors

In addition to onion skins, other natural dyes can be used. It is better to use them for coloring white eggs.

What do you need

• Turmeric, cranberries, hibiscus, beets, spinach or red cabbage. The following shows what colors can be achieved with these products.
• Water.
• 1 tablespoon vinegar 9%.
• Gauze and some vegetable oil.

How to paint eggs

Grind the food, cover with water and cook for about 10-15 minutes. The broth can be drained or left as it is. In the latter case, stains will appear on the eggs. Add vinegar to the broth.

Place the boiled eggs and leave for a few minutes or until the liquid has cooled completely. The longer the eggs are infused, the richer the color will turn out. You can even put them in the refrigerator overnight.

To make the colored eggs shine, you can wipe them with gauze soaked in vegetable oil.

In this video, Lifehacker showed how to color eggs with turmeric, cranberries and hibiscus tea.

Beets will give the eggs a pink tint, spinach green, and red cabbage blue. By the way, you can even get two colors from red cabbage. If you do not add vinegar to it, then the eggs will turn out purple-raspberry.

How to paint eggs with store-bought instant dyes

On the eve of Easter, shop counters are full of egg dyeing kits. With their help, it is better to paint eggs with white shells.

What do you need

• Food colorings. They are available in the form of tablets or powders in basic colors: red, yellow, green, blue.
• Water.
• 1 tablespoon vinegar 9%.

How to paint eggs

The dyes come with detailed instructions for use. Typically, you need to dissolve the dye in 200-250 milliliters of hot water and add vinegar.

In the resulting solution, alternately lower the hard-boiled eggs for 5-7 minutes. This should be done immediately after boiling, since hot eggs are colored with food colors.

Transfer the colored eggs to the rack. If they are simply laid out on paper, smudges may remain on the shell.

The stand can be made from a dishwashing sponge and safety pins, or from Styrofoam and matches.

What other options are there

With the help of food dyes, you can make not only plain, but also multi-colored dyes.

To make a rainbow coloration, eggs need to be dipped alternately in solutions of different colors or painted through a napkin. Here is a detailed instruction.

By changing the concentration of the solution or the dyeing time, you can get the ombre effect. This is when the same color turns into an increasingly lighter tone.

These are the eggs you get if you put them in a bag with colored rice.

Multi-colored patterns are easy to make by sticking duct tape on the eggs while dyeing.

You can make "space" eggs by painting the stars with a toothbrush.

How to paint eggs with store-bought pearlescent dyes

In addition to soluble ones, artificial rub-in dyes with a pearlescent effect are very popular.

What do you need

• White paper or paper towels.
• Medical gloves.
• Pearlescent dyes.

How to paint eggs

Cover the table with paper or paper towels. Wear gloves to avoid getting your hands dirty. Moving from color to color, gloves need to be washed, or better - changed to new ones.

Cook the eggs hard-boiled and let them cool slightly so that you can hold them in your hands. Place a few drops of dye on each egg and rub thoroughly over the entire surface. Place on a rack and let dry for 1–2 minutes.

If desired, the procedure can be repeated: the color will be more saturated. For the same purpose, eggs are sometimes pre-stained in soluble dyes.

How to dye eggs with a cloth

A simply stunning and unique pattern will turn out if you transfer drawings from natural silk fabric to eggs.

What do you need

• Bright natural silk fabric.
• Scissors and ruler.
• Stationery bands or threads.
• White cloth.
• Water.
• 3 tablespoons of vinegar.

How to paint eggs

Cut the fabric into strips about 18cm sides, place the raw eggs on the right side of the fabric and tie tightly. Then wrap the eggs with a plain white cloth.

Place the eggs in a pot of cold water. It must completely cover them. Add vinegar and cook after boiling for 15 minutes. Remove the eggs, cool completely and remove the cloth from them.

How to decorate eggs with iron-on stickers

You can decorate both colored and unpainted hard-boiled eggs with thermal stickers.

What do you need

• Scissors.
• Thermal stickers.
• Spoon.
• Water.

How to decorate eggs

Cut the stickers and match them to the size of the eggs. It is important. After all, if the sticker is too large, it will not stick tightly to the shell and it will be ugly to bump up from the bottom or top.

After putting on the sticker, gently dip the egg into boiling water on a spoon for a few seconds. The sticker will grip the egg very quickly.

How else to decorate Easter eggs

Painted eggs can be additionally decorated. For example, you can create a pattern using decorative paper tape. You can also wrap the dyes with thin tape for nail design. It is sold in cosmetic stores and.

Easter decoupage always looks original. To make it on a boiled dyed or unpainted egg, you need to divide the top layer of the napkin into small pieces and glue the shell with them using a brush dipped in egg white.

And finally, a few more simple ideas for decorating Easter eggs. To implement them, you will need auxiliary materials: ribbons, glue, paints, confetti, beads, and so on.

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