This Easter (I know, it is long-past), I tried to make all natural egg dyes. I boiled onion skins (for yellow), beets (for red), and spinach (for green). I poured dark coffee (for brown) and red grape juice (for purple) into glasses. I mixed the colored liquids with white vinegar and placed hard boiled eggs in the mixtures.
And then my husband and I waited. We checked on the mostly-still-white eggs and waited some more. The eggs barely retained the color. The brown was goopy and started to peel off. The other colors, which seemed dark in the glasses, barely had an effect on the eggs.
In the end, we decided to use the back-up, chemical dyes. Within minutes we had brilliantly colored eggs. We knew that the all natural dyes would result in lighter, more matte colors, but we barely even achieved that.
I’m not sure what happened. I researched the process online and followed what seemed to be standard recipes.
For readers who make their own dyes, what’s the trick?
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