A Somewhat Successful Attempt at Dying Easter Eggs Naturally

    Not every craft project turns out perfect, especially when it's your first attempt. After seeing all the neat ideas for egg decorations on pinterest, I felt inspired to decorate some eggs for the first time in a few years. But silly me, I forgot to buy egg dye! A quick search led me to this post by The Kitchn on how to dye eggs naturally.

    I had some red cabbage in my fridge, so I gave it a try. I followed the directions from The Kitchn, but in case you're lazy and don't want to click on it, here's what I did.

1. Bring 4 cups of water to a boil.
2. Chop about 1/4 of a head of red cabbage and add to water.
3. Let cook in boiling water for a few minutes, then cover and let simmer for about 20 minutes.
4. Strain cabbage, and collect dyed water in the bowl you want to dye your eggs in.
5. Let water sit for about 20 minutes to cool, and then add 4 tablespoons of vinegar (I used red wine vinegar).
6. Add eggs, and let sit in dye for a few hours or until they have reached your desired color.

    The color I ended up with was a nice light blue. I used both white and brown eggs to see the end result for both, and the white eggs turned out much better. The brown eggs resulted in a greenish/greyish/blue.

     Here is where things went awry. I taped some triangles to my eggs using electrical tape in order to make them a little more festive. This idea came from my aunt Britta's blog, who made some really cute easter eggs using tape. The trouble was that since my eggs soaked in the dye for so long (about 3-4 hours) the tape started to peel off, resulting in less than perfect (safe to say crappy) shapes. Bummer.

Do you see that one good triangle!? The triangle was my pride and joy.

   
   Oh they just look kinda sad, don't they? All in all, I think I will try dying eggs naturally again, but I will probably leave the decorating for after the soak. Have any of you guys tried dying eggs with natural dyes? Did it work for you?