Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Going Natural...or so I thought

Hello, Springtime. Today is gorgeous; I went on a little walk this morning and did my scripture study while reclining on the lawn. ESL classes ended this week, I think, unless someone else plans to do it during the summer.

I recently colored Easter eggs and decided to use non-store-bought dyes. Sweet Husby is usually game to go along with American holiday traditions, but didn't join me for this one because he had a lot of homework. So I only did two eggs to start and hope that maybe we'll both do more later this week.

Anyway, back to the natural dyes: I started by trying to boil the eggs in spinach, but they just turned a pale brownish yellow, even after I soaked them in the fridge for a few hours. So then I tried adding some curry to the spinach soup and it did add a few yellow/brown speckles to the eggs--but I still felt a little miffed about the utter pastel coloring it gave overall. Removing one egg, I started over with it by using a cold dye mixture of red grape juice, red wine vinegar, and chokecherry syrup. The resulting deep scarlet hue was glorious to behold, until I read the ingredients on the red wine vinegar and found out it had Red #40 in it. So much for going natural. To add insult to injury, I dried the egg by hand instead of patiently letting air do its job... all the deep red color came off in my napkin, and I ended up with a muted earth tone purply-pink as it was. This is the bottom egg in the picture. The top egg got to soak a bit longer in the spinach-curry soup, and then I finally used blueberries to give a nice marbly blue/brown effect. This egg resembles a dinosaur egg to me, and I like how it turned out.

Other natural dyes I would like to try: turmeric ( to get a deep golden yellow); onion skins (a different shade of gold/yellow); purple cabbage (strangely enough, reportedly results in blue).

6 comments:

Trina said...

I think they turned out great, they're beautiful. Turmeric turns everything yellow :)

Holly said...

These are really cute! I'm dyeing eggs with my preschoolers but we're not using natural dyes. Maybe next year with a bit more prep we'll do it natural. Good idea!

jamesandlindsaylattin said...

Way to go! They look awesome. Look at you - natural potpourri and egg dye.

Unknown said...
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Valerie said...

I like the natural background of your photo to go with natural and "natural" eggs!

LittleFamilyJL said...

Martha, is that you? Martha Stewart?
Oh,
No. It is just my amazing friend, Courtney, swiftly putting Martha to shame.