A few photos of this year's egg decorating with the kids

Here are a few more details and photos of our preparations for Easter over the last week or so. 

These are white eggs, hard boiled and then submerged in IRIS dyes for various lenghts of time. We made the pale green by mixing some of the yellow and blue dyes. The white stars were created by placing stickers on the eggs after boiling but before dyeing. More on this method below. 

The pink stars were created by dyeing an egg pink and leaving it to dry. Then we placed some star stickers on it and submerged it in the blue dye. This turned the pink  shell purple but the areas covered with stickers remained pink. The white star is the original egg shell colour.

Preparing beetroot for making a natural dye.

Beetroot is a brilliant natural dye, as anyone who has ever accidentally dropped beetroot juice in their clothing will know. To make a dye from it, chop fresh beetroot into chunks (you can leave the skin on) and boil it in enough water to cover it. Turn off the heat and leave the beetroot to infuse the water. After a few hours, strain and jar the water, You can place hard boiled eggs or just egg shells into the dye and leave them there for several hours to take on the colour. 

The same method can ebe used to make a dye with onion skins. You need to use quite a lot of onion skins but the results are pretty, eypecially if you use stickers on white eggs.

Beetroot dye

Take an egg.

Stick star-shaped stickers onto it.

Place it in the dye and leave it until the desired colour has been reached.

Dyed with a mixture of red and brown onion skins.

Brown egg shells dyed with homemade onion skin dye.

 

White egg shells dyed with homemade beetroot dye. I love the shade that the inside of the eggs has taken on here.

Our cloth Easter bunnies made of scraps of fabric and stuffed with teddybear filler.  I had planned to make several of these as gifts but unfortunately just didn't have the time to make more than this.