This will be the day that I dye...

OK, so I know it’s already Thursday night and that Easter is only three days away… so it is technically a little late to be posting about a really great Easter craft with any hope of anyone actually having time to accomplish it before Easter.

But I found a really cool Easter craft. And I just have to post about it!

So we dye Easter eggs every year – and though I think there might be some pagan roots somewhere in the egg dying tradition, it is one of those childhood memories that just make me feel a little too warm and fuzzy to drop. We most definitely put the focus on Jesus and His death and resurrection at Easter time (well, all year really…), and our kids don’t really even know who the Easter Bunny is. I think if you asked them who the Easter Bunny was, they’d likely tell you that it’s Mary Grace’s kids’ rabbits – on Easter. But we do give little gift baskets, we do a little egg hunt, and we do dye Easter eggs. So there you go.

Usually I just buy the little box kit of egg dyes and we go at it sometime the week before Easter. Sometimes I forget to have eggs on hand, so we do it late. One time I forgot to hard boil the eggs before we dyed them. (Just FYI, boiling eggs AFTER you dye them just washes the dye right off. And then you can’t re-dye them. In case you were wondering…) But in general, that’s what we do.

This year though I was inspired by a little book I got at a library sale a few years back. The book is called The Mudpies Activity Book: Recipes for Invention by Nancy Blakey. It is a great book, and there are ton of activities I plan to do over the years. But the one I’m talking about is the natural Easter egg dyes.

It just looked like fun, and I’m all for crafty stuff like that. I know for sure that I would have LOVED for someone to sit down with me and chop up fruits and vegetables to boil down into a real dye. I haven’t a clue what’s in those fancy dye tablets you get in egg dye kits. Honestly, I’ve barely ever even wondered. So how cool would it be to actually make your own dye?

Well, being the big kid that I am, I figured that even if my kids didn’t enjoy the whole project, at least I would. So I set myself a few reminders on my little email program to make sure I had the right ingredients at the right times (I found the recipe months ago, and knew I’d forget to do it if I didn’t set myself an electronic reminder. How lame is that!?). And, lo and behold, I was set and ready to go come this week!

So after a busy start to the week, today was The Day… and my kids were so excited. To make matters even more exciting, we had done a craft earlier in the week with some friends and had made little clay birds’ nests – so the big boys were so excited to fill their little nests with naturally dyed eggs.

So here is a little step-by-step of our very, very, VERY fun project – pictures and all…

The ingredients you’ll need to make the three colors we made are water, vinegar, 2 cups each of blueberries, chopped beet root and yellow onion skins. Oh, and eggs for dying, of course. ;o)

So we first chopped up the beet root and got the onion skins peeled.

We used frozen blueberries that we had on hand for the blueberry dye. I had everything measured out and ready to go.

We only had two of the right sized pots, so we had to piggy back the different colors, but the basic process was to pour 2 ½ cups of water (4 cups for the onion skins) and two cups of the chosen material for dying into a pan.

Then you bring the pot to a boil. Once it’s boiling, cover it and reduce the heat to let it simmer for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, we poured the dye and the ingredients through a sieve into a heat proof container where we left it to cool. I just threw away the mushy beets, blueberries and onion skins, but I suppose if you’re really crafty in the kitchen you could think of something better to do with them.

Once the liquid was cooled to room temperature, we added two tablespoons of vinegar to each color.

Then we poured the dye into some tall glass mason jars that seemed a good fit for dipping the eggs into. I probably could have poured the boiling liquid straight into the jars but it seemed easier at the time to use a dish that had a wide enough opening to insure a spill-free pour, what with boiling liquids and small helpers and all. ;o)

And that was it for making the dye.

Then we just had a blast dipping our eggs and experimenting with how the colors of the eggs changed with varying lengths of time in their color baths. We had so much fun that when we ran out of eggs we ended up dipping strips of paper just so we could keep going! The colors that came out of the blueberries, beets and onions were so rich and lovely. I really was surprised at how bright the dyes turned out. I kind of wondered if the colors might be a little dull and watered down looking. But they turned out beautifully!

The boys had a great time setting the eggs up in their little clay nests. We have two little animatronic pet birds in our family, named Chirpy and Sunny (they are fairly realistic replicas of an eastern bluebird and a goldfinch, with lifelike chirps and all) and the boys had so much fun setting the little birds on “their” eggs in the nests. They were so cute!

So the process of making the dyes was really fun. I know it would have been faster, cheaper and easier to just buy the little kit with the colorful dissolving tablets. But I cannot describe to you the joy I felt today as we methodically planned out each step of the process. The vast majority of today was spent in making those beautiful eggs. Each step was very simple, and the kids were able to do anything not requiring sharp knives or direct contact with boiling water. But there were so many steps - and a lot of lag time between steps - that it did take all day.

There were eggs to boil, beets to chop, onions to peel, water to measure, pots to boil, liquids to cool, vinegar to pour, jars to fill and work areas to set up… not to mention a ton of clean up.

But nothing was complicated or difficult, and all of it was very soothing, really. It was such a peaceful day. And as each step simmered or cooled without supervision, we went about with our other business of the day. The dye making process was just in the background all day long.

This will most definitely be the most memorable egg dying experience of my life so far, and I’m sure it is one that we will be doing again. I wish I could describe the satisfaction we all felt through the process. But I’m not the best with written words. So you’ll just have to trust me on that one.

So there you go.

A very fun, very unique project that brought fun to a whole house for a whole day. And now we even have some beautifully colored paper bits to make into cards and notes for loved ones!

So if you happen to have a spare day and some beets and blueberries lying around this weekend, maybe you can try to make up a batch or two of dye. I think you’d really enjoy it…

Oh, and don’t forget to get those eggs hardboiled BEFORE you dye them!