S and I were curious about whether or not the foods we used as dyes in our Edible Baby Paint would dye our Easter Eggs. Having perused a bit on the internet, I knew a few of the things were not likely to work well, but part of being a scientist and running an experiment is that sometimes things don't work out! So I felt that even though we were unlikely to get four beautifully dyed eggs out of it, it was still a worthwhile endeavor.
Please excuse the poor lighting on all of these photos - in order for the eggs to soak overnight in their dye baths, we did this before bed (late/dark outside) and of course the eggs were the very first thing S wanted to do this morning when she woke up (late/dark outside).
Here we are making purees out of the things we wanted to try for dyes. We have used all these foods in our baby paint, so we prepped them in a similar way - blending a few S-sized handfuls in the blender until they were pretty smooth. Blenders are loud. :)
One of S's favorite parts was sampling the foods as we went.
It was pretty cool to watch the spinach/spring mix in the blender - it collapsed down very quickly as it pureed!
I added about 2 teaspoons of vinegar to each cup of "dye", then S carefully lowered an egg into the cups and we placed them in the refrigerator overnight (about 11 hours).
S was super excited to fish the eggs out this morning. It was cold and goopy and awesome, she said.
Our four eggs post-rescue. At this point you can still tell which was in which dye bath.
After they were cleaned off, it was a bit less apparent! The blueberries did a pretty amazing job of dyeing the egg purple; however, the other three eggs were incredibly faint.
The raspberry bath made the egg very faintly pink.
The sweet potato/carrot bath really didn't do much of anything. I think any orange tint was possibly leftover food coating more than anything else.
The spinach/spring mix dye bath did make the egg ever so faintly green, but you really have to strain to see it.
The blueberry bath made the egg pretty strikingly purple. The morning light isn't doing it justice - it is much darker in person. It actually looks pretty cool! If you wanted to try natural dyes and have success, I would recommend the blueberries. :)
All in all S still had a lot of fun doing this project. I think it's a valuable lesson that in science (and life!) things don't always turn out perfectly, but that's OK! Running an experiment can be fun even if it has an unexpected outcome.
If you'd like to try dyeing eggs naturally and get fabulous results the first time, I'd recommend checking out this post by my friend, Emily. She's done a lot of research on natural dyes and the eggs she makes are gorgeous!
Please always supervise your infant/child at play. Please stay within arms reach and never leave infants/children unattended.
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