Fun at Home with Kids TESTING: Easter Eggs Three Ways: Tie Dyed Eggs

Preschooler+

You can read about our first method, Toothbrush Painted Eggs here.
You can read about our third method, Melted White Crayon Eggs here.

S's preschool is having an Egg Hunt and has requested that S come with a dozen hardboiled dyed eggs. Since S and I would both get bored doing the same thing 12 times over, we decided to try three different ways to dye our eggs. Up first are Tie Dyed Eggs. When I saw them here, I just knew we had to try them. They are really unique - I just love the pattern the paper towel leaves behind. It reminds me of skyscrapers or some sort of cityscape.

To make Tie Dyed Eggs, you'll need:

Hardboiled Eggs

Paper Towels

Food Coloring

Vinegar

Spray Bottle

Plastic Bags

Rubberbands/Ties

I found these cool neon food colors at the grocery store, I guess they bust out special colors in honor of Easter? I'd never seen these before, so I figured now was a good time to try them!

We used the plastic lid off of a disposable pan S uses sometimes for sensory play since I didn't want to risk the food coloring dyeing anything else of ours. We have half-sized paper towels, and those were actually big enough for the eggs we had, so we assigned one half paper towel per egg. It was easy enough to fit two in the tray at once, so S set to work designing the patterns for our first two eggs.

You can completely cover the paper towel with food coloring or you can leave white in between. We tried one paper towel with more spacing between the food coloring drops (not shown below) and the other three S really wanted to completely cover with food coloring - so that's what she did!

Once you have the paper towels covered to your preschooler's standards, you mix a few teaspoons full of vinegar and some water into a spray bottle and spray the mix evenly over the paper towel. We made sure that it was covered with the mixture, but not dripping wet.

Ah, she's getting so big! The last few times we'd tried the spray bottle it was too hard for her (probably in part because our spray bottle is from the Dollar Store and a bit tough to squeeze), but now she's really getting the hang of it. I did help a bit to make sure that there was even coverage of the vinegar/water mixture.

Once your paper towel has been sprayed down with vinegar-water, place the egg in the middle and gather the paper towel around the egg tightly. Use a rubberband to secure it. Then place the rubber-banded paper-toweled egg into a plastic baggie and rubberband that again.

They were a little drippy, so just to be safe, we put them back into the plastic tray to "marinate". Apparently the longer they soak, the brighter the colors. We let ours sit for about 4 hours.

Fair warning - if you don't use gloves, your hands will look horrible afterwards. Seriously. My fingernails are black. Whoops. At least I had the foresight to be the one in charge of wrapping the eggs so S's hands were (mostly) spared!

They are just so cool looking! S and I are big fans of this method of dyeing. It's pretty foolproof and flexible - the paper towels that were soaked with dye made fabulous eggs and the paper towel with spaced out drops of dye also made a fabulous egg! You can't go wrong!