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Coloring Easter Eggs, Part II: Onion Skins

DSC01659 300x232 Coloring Easter Eggs, Part II: Onion SkinsLast week I wrote about coloring easter eggs using vegetable dyes.

In my opinion, if you want to try coloring easter eggs without chemicals, onion skins are the way to go!  It’s easy to do, and makes really interesting abstract patterns on the egg shells.  Plus, you end up with a bunch pretty hard boiled eggs in your fridge for eating!

I first heard about coloring eggs with onion skins from Zak’s mom, who did this as a child in Scotland.  In Scottish tradition, you bring decorated hard boiled eggs outside on easter, then roll them down a hill until they crack, and then eat them.   This is similar to our easter egg rolls in America, except we do those on flat ground, and roll them with a spoon!  Either way, eggs are a symbol of spring and rebirth, and people have been decorating eggs for easter for centuries.

If you want an inexpensive easter project, I highly recommend trying this!

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Coloring Easter Eggs, Naturally!

DSC01656 300x225 Coloring Easter Eggs, Naturally!Although people have been coloring easter eggs for centuries, I have a feeling they didn’t always use pre-packaged dye tablets complete with stickers in whimsical easter designs.

I’m always up for a crafty project, especially one that has a potential to get really messy!  So this year, I decided to investigate how to color easter eggs the natural way, like great-grandma would have done it.  I also like the idea of using fewer chemicals, especially if it’s a project to do with your kids.

I tried to set my expectations that natural dyes wouldn’t be nearly as vibrant as the candy-colored ones the ‘egg coloring kits’ can produce.  I bought a dozen eggs.  Immediately I had a problem: eggs in the UK are all BROWN!  In the US we could purchase brown or white eggs, so when coloring easter eggs, we always bought white.  Hmmm.  I could have splurged on expensive white duck eggs, but that seemed a bit excessive for this potential failure of a project.  Plus, that’s against the British philosophy of “Make Due and Mend!”.  So home I went with my brown eggs.

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