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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