Naturally Dyed Eggs
It started by seeing my dear friend Rodica posting her traditionally Romanian dyed eggs and what with all the time on our hands at home with Molly, I thought it could be a great way to get her involved.
She loves handling the precious white shelled eggs, pretending to drop them, giggling, rolling them around in her palms. The crusty crackle of onion skins peeled off the bulb to dunk in boiling water and create some colour.
After chatting it through and basically making an executive decision we went with brown onion skins, red onion skins, turmeric and beetroot. Turmeric was by far the best one, beetroot I had to re-do with red onion skins and the brown onion skins were pretty good but it’s still brown - yes, there is a beauty to that natural hue but I never got anything like a gorgeous pinky that I was anticipating.
The process is so beautifully simple, it’s really easy to do with little people, and the bonus is once you’ve used the liquid for the eggs you can use the coloured liquid beauty for scraps of fabrics. To be honest that was my plan however things went array. I was just so busy with Molly that it never happened. However the process was so easy that I’d happily do this again with Molly just for fabrics.
The colours I used athat you can see in the pic left -> right: Brown onion skinds, beetroot then re-done with red onion skins and turmeric.
All I did was fill an old saucepan with water, add in roughly 3/4 onion skins worth and for the turmeric I used 1 heaped teaspoon in water. Bring to the boil and simmer for a while. Then pour into a jam jar/glass and leave to cool a little.
Then pop in your hard boiled egg - the longer you leave it in the stronger the colour.
Those of you who know me, know I’m not a follower of recipes and I tend to wing it quite a bit and that’s the fun isn’t it.
Do I have any tips to this? Um, well, get your kid involved. Don’t think they can’t do it. Molly is 2 years and 3 months old and apart from coming near the boiling water, she helped with everything:
peeling onion skins and putting them in the saucepan.
measuring a spoonful of turmeric and putting it in the saucepan.
putting the eggs into the jars full of coloured liquid.
The biggest takeaway for me, is that all of this takes time, and sometimes we as adults rush, we like to get things done right? But actually, kids are here for the journey not the end game and it was really lovely to follow her lead.
I loved watching her little mind wander and be amazed, the colour of the liquid, the fun of ‘plopping’ the eggs into the liquid, her trying to fish them out with a spoon. Yes there was mess, yes we might have got turmeric stains on our clothes, but I had prepared myself for this, to allow this and I think that is the key for me. The allowing.
If you liked this post why not pin it to a Pinterest board ‘CRAFTS TO DO WITH YOUR KIDS’?
