Make silk-dyed Easter eggs
When I was a kid, I remember getting really excited about Easter because it meant one thing: candy! A close runner-up to the candy though, was how much I enjoyed making Easter eggs. We always used the standard old PAAS branded kit.
I get pretty nostalgic remembering the little dye tablets, the egg dipper thing, the little egg stands, etc. What I do not remember, is being very creative with my color choices nor very good at dyeing my eggs. The other Vunder team members remember similar stories...
That's why this Easter, we decided to try bring our Easter egg dyeing to a new level! After doing some research, we found a great article on the Our Best Bites blog and discovered an easy and fun way to make some really unique patterns on our eggs by using silk ties to stain the eggs, rather than those junky dye tablets. Here's what you can do to make beautiful and fun Easter eggs!
Here's what you'll need:
Dyed silk (must be 100% silk)
Fastener (some thread or twisty ties)
Cloth (rags, old shirts, bed sheets, etc.)
1/4 Cup vinegar
Raw eggs
Here's what you do:
Go to a the thrift store and find some old silk scarves that have fun or unusual prints that might look fun on some eggs. If you can't find scarves, you could look for silk ties, silk blouses, or whatever else you can find.
Once you've got your silk, cut it into pieces that are large enough to wrap each egg completely. Next wrap the egg in the silk and make sure the right side is touching the egg directly. The right side is the part would be facing outward if it were a tie, blouse, or scarf. The reason here is that we want the strongest concentration of dye to be able to stain the shell of the egg. Finally, use your thread to tie the end of the silk around the egg so that they look like the photo here.
One other observation: when the silk is tight to the egg's shell, the pattern will more directly mimic the pattern on the silk. However, if the fabric has folds in it, there will be a billow, whimsical swirl to the pattern. Either way looks really interesting so you should try it both ways.
After all your eggs have been wrapped in silk, wrap them again in your plain cloth. This is so the dye from the silk doesn't spread to the other eggs as they touch while they're in the boiling water.
Next, pour water into a pot, add 1/4 cup of vinegar, place your eggs into the pot, and boil the water for about 20 minutes. Be sure to use enough water to cover all the eggs.
Once enough time has passed, strain out the water and let the eggs cool in a colander until they're cool enough to be handled.
Finally, here comes the fun part: unwrap the eggs, set them somewhere to dry/cool fully and see how they turned out.
This method of dyeing Easter eggs was definitely better looking than the old dye tablets method that I remember as a kid, and even better, it makes people think I'm actually an egg dyeing master (but you all know my secret!)
We hope you have fun trying this out!
