4.06.2012

Dyeing Easter Eggs with Food Coloring


I realize that Emmett is a little young to be doing easter egg dyeing but I couldn't help myself. I was at Trader Joe's yesterday getting milk for him and there were the eggs, sitting there looking at me. I looked at him and back at the eggs and grabbed a carton.

Last night I was looking around our house for things to do natural egg dyeing. Like this. But alas we hardly had any of those ingredients. And I wasn't about to run out to the store to get stuff for an activity that will last about 5 minutes and not even be used (yup I hate eggs - yes all kinds, hard boiled, scrambled, sliced, omelets, egg salad, etc. yuck!)


So during my searching in the pantry I found some food coloring. And thought ah-ha! This has got to work. And lo and behold on the back of the box they have instructions! Like it was meant to be. I love it when things like this happen.


So to create the dye baths, I used 1/3 cup vinegar, 20 drops of each color and then 1 1/2 cups of warm water. I made 6 colors: red, yellow, green, blue, teal and purple. I made the teal and purple by following the mixtures on the back of the box.


Then after boiling the eggs I plunked them into their baths. Emmett had a pretty good time, although there was more interest in stirring rather than looking at the eggs, but hey he stayed put through the whole thing so that was exciting :) Here is a little video, although I am mostly telling him to be gentle, but still there was no spillage and only one egg casualty.

Okay so I am having serious issues uploading this video to blogger...so...if you want to take a peak I've put it on YouTube and you can get to it here. I will keep trying to insert it later on :)

So this is how they turned out



The colors are really bright (I let them sit probably 10 mins or so) and I think the slight discoloration is probably more form imperfection on the eggs rather than the dyeing. The teal and green turned out to be pretty much the same. But I love how dark the blue one is and the purple one!

With the left over dye we did some watercolor painting


and this is how it turned out


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