Onion Skin Egg Dye with Leaf Patterns

Onion Skin Easter Egg Dye with Leaf Patterns

 

Center egg was dyed with onion skin dye.

 

       This week, while dying Easter eggs at my Mom's house, I decided to try a dye technique that I read about in one of Liliana's Easter books: Onion Skin Dye. Liliana helped me peel the skin off of two onions and place them in a saucepan. Then I added water and boiled it for a while. (The original directions called for boiling the eggs in the dye combo for 20 minutes but our eggs were happily already pre-boiled by Grandma before we arrived so I simply let the onion skins simmer for about 20 minutes with no eggs in it). 

       Since there were no live leafy plants anywhere in the snowy outdoors (at least that weren't frozen and crunchy!), I used some branches from my Mom's houseplants, wet them, wrapped them around the eggs, tied them to the egg with some string, then set them in the onion skin dye.  The eggs soaked for about 3-4 hours, then Liliana and I removed the leaves to find some fun textures.  Such a pretty hue, reminiscent of freshly-laid Barred rock chicken eggs and with such an interesting yet subtle texture because of the leaves. 
       This technique would be fun to use some year when we have a later Easter with some green plants outside so that the girls would have the fun of scavenging for leaves as part of the process.  This was so simple to do, that I'd love to try some other natural dyes while making Easter eggs!