New Traditions - Dyed Eggs for Christmas

Anni is visiting from Germany, and asked if we dyed eggs for Easter.  As we don't, we are starting a new tradition. 

 I discovered that the Supermarkets in Rotorua do not sell white eggs - only brown.  So I guess we will dye brown eggs.  Not sure how it is going to work out.

 We boiled the eggs for 4 minutes with a tablespoon of vinegar, and popped them in the bowls.  In each bowl was approx 50ml of food colouring, and1 tsp vinegar.  Once the eggs were in the bowl, I topped it up with extra boiling water.

 Using a spoon, we rolled the eggs around to get good coverage.  Note how some are darker than others.  I guess it depends on how brown the egg was to begin with.

Remove from the colour and drain on paper towels.  I was disppointed with the yellow.  Didn't do anything on the brown egg, just made it look browner.

The next one was to use silk to dye the eggs.  I had some scraps of silk left over from a project, so we cut the silk up and wrapped it around each egg.

The right side of the fabric, needs to be facing the egg, so the design can transfer to the egg.

Using twist ties, we secured the fabric tight around the egg.

Then we wrapped cotton around the fabric eggs and secured these with rubber bands.  This is to collect any stray dye, and also help press the fabric close to the egg.

The fabric covered egg were gently placed into a large pot, and covered with water, and 1/2 cup of vinegar was added. The eggs got cooked for about an hour. The house smelt a bit from the dye and the vinegar.  The rubber bands failed, and just floated.  However, they did their job.

Mixed results.  Some of the eggs were beautiful, and the fabric had transferred the patterns well.  Others were just yuck, dull and horrible.  Perhaps the results would have been different with white eggs, but we had brown ones to dye.

The ones that we decided were the boring, non pretty ones, we popped into the cold food colouring bowls.

 Look what happened.  Glorious colours and patterns.  We will do this again.

 Also note how the brown egg shows through, as the eggs were cold when they went into the food colouring.

 Just because I can,  here are some images of the eggs we dyed.

Fabric dyed brown eggs

Fabric dyed brown eggs

Once the eggs had cooled down, we gently rubbed cooking oil into them.  The vegetable oil was put onto a paper towel, and we rubbed the egg with it.  A nice sheen appeared.

 The eggs survived about 2 weeks before they began to have a "Rotorua" smell about them.