Past Project Friday - Easter Edition

Every Friday I will be posting some sort of crafty project that I have completed in the past.  It could be anything from baking, to sewing, needlecrafts art, decorating, etc.

I'm one of those nerds who has always made it a point to dye Easter eggs every year.  Throughout high school and college when my friends and even my sister found it to be incredibly lame, I've always enjoyed it.  Even after I got married and moved out I would dye them by myself while my husband put in long hours at the hospital.

These were made in 2007 and it was the first year that I experimented with natural dyes, and when I began to hollow out the eggs so I could keep them from year to year.  

I can't remember the exact tutorial I used (probably something from Martha), but I basically collected a bunch of different types of plant materials; placed them on the egg; then tightly wrapped a piece of nylon (cut from some pantyhose) around the egg to hold the flower or leaves in place.  Then I just threw all of them in the dye bath and let them simmer for about an hour. 

There are all different kinds of things you can use to make natural dyes - from grape juice to boiled spinach leaves to coffee.  I like using this site as a resource.

For this batch, the dark amber eggs were made from boiled red onion skins and the yellow ones were made using turmeric powder.  I also experimented using both brown and white eggs.

The following Easter I used this same method again, but used boiled red cabbage leaves and achieved a lovely blueish-lavender color - but for the life of me I can't find any pictures to show you - argh!  I'm actually getting down to the end of my collection of Easter eggs because every year I keep giving a bunch of them away as gifts, but I've got a nice little line-up of at least a dozen empty eggshells on my windowsill waiting for this year!