Natural dye experiments

This is a post about my experiments with natural dye this Easter. I decided to do it separate from my Easter post because there are lots of pictures and this post is long in and of itself.

I've mentioned before that I have the kids off of any artificial dyes, as well as myself now too. I found it was affecting me similarly. It's been about a year since I started doing this, so I'm still learning new things I can do with natural dyes for treats and holidays, etc.

First, Abby's preschool teacher asked me if I could make frosting for sugar cookies they would have for their Easter party. All of the parents helped with something, and she knows about Abby being off the dyes so she figured I'd be able to do this easier than another parent.

I did not have any natural food coloring left, I used it up on Josh's b-day cake, so this was fun to experiment with. I used a tiny amount of beet juice for the pink and some turmeric powder for the yellow. It worked so well! The flavor was not really affected either. I added a little orange extract to the yellow and a little peppermint extract to the pink just for fun. The white had almond extract. Her class loved it, her teacher said she couldn't believe it was that easy. I had leftover frosting so the girls and I made sugar cookies to take to my family Easter dinner on Sunday. In this picture is also some naturally colored candies for Abby's class to decorate with.

Next, I decided to experiment with naturally dying Easter eggs.
Part of the reason is because we planned to eat the eggs and the dye can and does seep through the shell onto the eggs, but a larger part of the reason for doing this is because I hadn't ever heard of doing it this way before and it looked like a lot of fun to try it. I was right, it was probably the most fun I've ever had dying Easter eggs. Part of making each dye myself and then wondering if the egg is really going to turn out like it's supposed to just makes it like a really fun science experiment.

Here is how I made the blue and pink dye. Boiling red cabbage (blue), and beets (pink) then using the colored liquid leftover from that. For every cup of colored liquid used, you use 1 TBSP of white vinegar, that's all it is. Easy!

Here is our dying station. The yellow was turmeric powder in water with the vinegar, and the one on the left is actually the green dye. Really! It's made from a little of the red cabbage liquid and a little turmeric powder. That and the blue were probably the most fun, watching a visibly green or blue egg emerge from a visibly purple looking liquid.

We dyed some of the eggs for about 2 hours and then the rest were left in overnight (in the fridge because we did plan to eat the eggs).

Here are the finished eggs! I LOVED each color! So naturally beautiful!

I had to take some individual pictures of the colors to show each one closer up and the detail of them. I love this blue, reminds me of a robins egg.

This egg is cracked, but it was the light blue (left in for only 2 hours). I love the pattern on it.

A light pink egg, love the speckles!

A little darker pink


Speckled yellow

Green with a lighter green stripe. That was caused by the light part touching the side of the jar and not getting the dye all around it like the rest of the egg. I still can't believe this egg was pulled from that purple liquid, amazing!

The greens
The yellows. The ones left in overnight didn't get darker because the turmeric powder was very strong and the ones in for only 2 hours got vibrant fast.

The pinks/browns

The blues

I had so much fun doing it this way. The girls had fun too, though they don't really remember doing it the other way, and it wasn't really that different anyway, they aren't the ones who made the dye so for them it was really the same.

I want to try this again next year and try other colors. The instructions I found online to do this had a lot of other ingredients to make other colors, like grape juice is supposed to make lavender, etc.
I think I would still want to do this even if we weren't artificial dye free because it really was a lot of fun to do and it really wasn't that hard either.