Coloring Eggs with Vegetable Dyes!

Today we colored our Easter eggs. For fun, we decided to do something different. We made our own dyes from vegetables! Only a couple days ago, while at Whole Foods, I found a little handout explaining how to do it! You can make yellow from tumeric, blue from red cabbage, green from mixing those two, red from beets, and purple from blueberries. All of the dyes were made from 1 quart of water, 2 tablespoons of vinegar, and then about 4 cups of each fruit/vegetable. With the tumeric, you only need 3 tablespoons. The girls helped me chop the veggies. Then, we had to boil each veggie with the vinegar for around 30 minutes. To make green, I boiled the eggs in the tumeric to make yellow, then I put the yellow eggs in the red cabbage dye. I was surprised how green it came out! The girls had a lot of fun, even though Ceci got a little crazy and was dipping everyone's eggs in all the colors. I was just wiping spills constantly! But in the end, we all had some nice eggs. The beet dye was gorgeous, but once the egg had been pulled out and dried, it was more brown than red. The blue from the red cabbage was very pale but so pretty! The purple was more gray than purple from the blueberries. The tumeric made a rich mustard yellow. I don't know how we got this very purple looking one-- I think it was in the beet dye for a bit?! I really like how this palette turned out, though! Very fun experience.




Our Hand-Made Bunnies



We worked on these all week, but now that it was Easter eve, we wanted to have them done so we worked on them until they were finished. We got the instructions from Living Crafts magazine, which we love. We made them from wool felt and blanket-stitched them. We stuffed them with wool, too! I made Ceci's and Bella and Lala made their own! I think they came out great, and I am so proud of them! Sweet Easter Bunnies!

Oh, and here are our finished chicks and eggs!