Decorating Easter Eggs

People have been decorating Easter eggs from the time before Easter was celebrated. In those ancient times, eggs were a symbol of new life and were often decorated during the time of the spring solstice. One way of celebrating was to decorate and color the outer shell of eggs.

In some countries, if you were wealthy, you could decorate your eggs by painting them with silver or gold. If not painted, then gold leaf would be pressed to the shell. For the less than wealthy, plants material would be used in decorating Easter eggs.

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Even today, you can get as elaborate or as “natural” as you want in decorating eggs. Do you want to have “gold” eggs? Gold leaf can be purchased at almost any craft store. If you are interested in coloring Easter eggs using a more natural method, here’s a list of plant material that you can use.

• Brown or tan: strong brewed coffee or tea
• Orange: Yellow onion skins
• Light Orange: Carrots peels
• Yellow: ground turmeric
• Light yellow: lemon or orange peels, carrot tops, ground cumin
• Green-gold: Peels from green apples (Yellow Delicious)
• Light green: Spinach leaves
• Blue: Red cabbage leaves and blueberries
• Purple: Red onion skins
• Red or pink: Frozen raspberries or strawberries, cranberries, fresh or canned beets

This method of decorating Easter eggs is quite simple. Place a single layer of eggs in the bottom of a pan then cover with water. Add a teaspoon of vinegar and the fruit or vegetable material. Turn on the burner and bring the water to a boil. Turn down the heat and let the eggs simmer for approximately 15 minutes. Remove the eggs and place in a bowl to cool. Note: if you want the color to be darker, you can leave the eggs covered by the natural dye in the fridge overnight.

Another fun way of dyeing Easter eggs is to use bits and pieces of crepe paper or tissue paper. After boiling the eggs, put pieces of crepe paper on the wet shell. The paper will stick to the shell until the moisture dies. Then the paper will fall off and the color will remain. Try crumpling up the paper, using a couple of different colors together.

These are just a few of the ways of decorating Easter eggs. The main thing is to have fun…it helps if you include the kids, too. Why not use those decorated eggs for a fun Easter egg hunt and invite all the neighborhood children?

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