Egg-ceptional Easter: How to Make Stunning Herb-Patterned Easter Eggs

I have been making naturally dyed Easter Eggs for years, and it is always fun to see the colors that you can create from nature.  This year I saw some Onion Dyed Easter Eggs on Pinterest that had leaf patterns imprinted on them.  I decided to make some of my own, using herbs along with a wider variety of natural dyes. Here are my natural herb stenciled Easter Eggs!

They came out even better than I expected, and weren’t too difficult to make either.  Pantyhose are used to hold the herbs tight against the eggs during the dying process.  Although the original project used blown eggs I hard boiled my eggs, because it seems simpler to me, and because my kids love hardboiled eggs for a snack.  Here is how I created the Easter Eggs.

Herb Stenciled Easter Eggs

Materials:

• A dozen eggs
• Turmeric
• Red cabbage
• Onion skins
• Herbs – cilantro, parsley, dill
• Old nylon stocking
• Rubber bands
• Saucepan
• Mason jars

Directions:

1. First, I hard boiled 8 of the eggs.
2. I made two different natural dyes using turmeric and red cabbage.
3. For the turmeric I added 1 Tablespoon of turmeric to 3 cups of water, and boiled it for half an hour.
4. For the red cabbage I cut up about 2 cups of cabbage, added 3 cups of water and boiled it for half an hour.
5. I drained the red cabbage water and cooled both dyes, and put them in mason jars, adding 1 Tablespoon of vinegar to each jar.
6. To make the pattern on the hard boiled eggs I laid herbs flat on them.  I found it was easier to make the herbs lay flat if both the eggs and herbs were damp. I used cilantro, dill and parsley, and the cilantro was the easiest to work with.
7. Then I cut pieces from the leg of an old pair of stockings, and rubber banded them around the eggs.  The stockings hold the herbs in place.
8. Finally, I put the stockings into the mason jars of dye, and refrigerated them.  I let the red cabbage eggs soak for 24 hours, and the turmeric ones for about 8 hours.  Longer soaking would have given even deeper colors.
9. Once they were done I cut off the stockings to reveal the pattern.  The turmeric gives a pastel yellow color, while the red cabbage eggs are a pretty blue.
10. The onion skin eggs were even easier to make, since I knew from experience that I could hard boil the eggs right in the dye water and get rich deep color fast.
11. For this I prepared four raw eggs with herbs held in place by stockings.
12. Then I put a cup or so of onion skins in a saucepan with 3 cups of water, and added the 4 raw eggs right to the pot.  I added a tablespoon of vinegar, and boiled the eggs for 15 minutes, and then cooled them in a bowl of ice water, with the stocking still on.
13. They came out a gorgeous deep orange color.

I love these eggs – they almost look too good to eat!