Celebrations Across The World
The history of coloring or painting eggs is long and varied, but in almost all circumstances, eggs are decorated to celebrate the Spring equinox, a peace offering, or to represent the rebirth or renewal of a religious figure.
The decorating techniques for these eggs, which are often hard-boiled for easy portability as a snack, are as varied as the religions and cultures through which they hold meaning. In Bulgaria, Russia, and other Slavic countries, a waxing process (called batik) is used to create intricate, brightly colored images on the shell of the eggs.
In the United States, Easter Eggs are typically decorated with store-bought kits, and the colors are achieved through artificial dyes and chemicals. The results are bright, and mostly fool-proof.
Homemade Is More Fun
Dying eggs is a fun experience for children and adults alike, but there are inventive ways to avoid all those dyes and chemicals, and you can teach children a little bit about dyes that occur in nature! It's fun AND science!
To dye your own eggs naturally, you must have some patience, and you should probably lower your expectations. You won't be achieving the electric blues, greens and purples that are common in the commercially available kits. What you will get are subtle hues of pink, robin's egg blue, pale yellow green, and shades of yellow.
Here are a few food items that will result in some pretty interesting colors:
Different breeds of chickens create different colored egg shells. Shop locally to get eggs in a variety of browns, speckles, blues and greens. I actually had a difficult time finding local, organic white eggs, so do the best you can.
Trial And Error
I realized after I added the different dying agents to my boiling water that I probably should have created the dye water first, and then boiled the eggs in the dyed water.
My first approach was to start with cold water, turn on the heat, and toss in whatever extras were needed to achieve the desired color. The extras in the water settled on the eggs, causing white spots that didn't dye.
Now, you get to reap the benefits of my mistakes!
A Rainbow Of Colors
Turmeric created a beautiful golden egg, and the cabbage produced a beautiful robin's egg blue. The spinach turned the shells a very faint light greenish yellow, while the beets were successful in dying both my fingers and the eggs a vibrant pastel pink. The paprika and chili powder were a lighter orange color, but the results were similar to the gold color of the turmeric, but not as vibrant. The Red Zinger tea yielded interesting results: rather than the lavender that was described on multiple websites, the eggs were mottled with tones of gray and black and resembled polished stones. Not the result I was expecting, but neat regardless!
Just be patient and have a good time teaching the little ones (and your awesome friends) a little bit of science while they're having fun.