Egg Dyeing Techniques Tested

Remember how on Tuesday I said I was testing a few pins...well, I ended up testing 4! I'll show you 3 of those today. All of them are about methods of dyeing eggs. I thought I had a ton of eggs in the fridge, but I only had 6. But it's just Cameron and I here and we really don't need a butt load of cooked eggs sitting in the fridge. More than that and they'd just be "eggstra". C'mon. You knew I had to throw that in somewhere, right? Right. 

So the first method I tried was the Volcano Eggs. 

The Original Pin

http://www.toddlerapproved.com/2012/04/volcano-egg-dyeing.html

Carolyn was perusing Pinterest one day while her son was napping and found the Volcano Eggs. She says, "I rushed to my cupboard and fridge, and pulled the supplies out.  I decided I would use blue and green for my baking soda paint, then use the red and yellow die to just drop directly onto the egg.  My paint brushes were in the back bedroom, which was locked… and the door sticks really bad.  So I decided to use spoons to “paint” the egg with.  Then I dripped some yellow die on.  Rather boring I thought.  But I was too lazy to do much more. I grabbed the vinegar and poured some on.  Whoa!!  Crazy colorful volcanoes!!!  It was awesome!  Sadly the color was annoyingly pale." 

The Pinstrosity

This sounded like fun to me, so I thought I'd try it out and see what I could get. 

The Investigation:

I followed the instructions from the original pin and got my baking soda paint mixed together. It looked bright and vibrant. 

I was just going to use clear vinegar, but I thought I'd take it a step further and see what vinegar with food coloring in it did too. 

There's the fizzing. Just like Carolyn found, the colors did go quite pale and boring. 

So I thought I'd leave the baking soda paint on for longer to see if that helped. Nope. Didn't do anything. The colored Vinegar was fun and made different colors run differently. In the end the egg was neat, but not near as vibrant and fun as the original. I'm thinking she must have used neon food coloring or put more than the 6 drops I put in the baking soda (which I thought was a lot).  

So, not a fail...but not as cool as I had hoped. And mine didn't really fizz all that good. I'd rather just dip eggs, it's less of a hassle. 

Alright, on to method #2. 

The Original Pin

http://elhadadepapel.blogspot.com/2012/04/huevos-eggs-eier.html

The directions say, "Leave the eggs some minutes in the color and then add some more water. Do the same till the eggs are completely covered by the water."

Jamie, aka The Pinning Pirate, found these and decided to give it a try. Here's her story: "First of all, from the picture, I couldn't tell if the eggs were peeled or not. I left the shell on my eggs. I used the closest version of glasses I had of the original picture. As you can see here..."

"I started out by making the purple, orange, mint green and rose red colors from the directions on the  food coloring box. 26 red 14 blue, etc. and did the last two glasses red and green. After getting the color in the glass, I added 1 tablespoon of water and let it sit for about 10 minutes. After each 10 minute interval, I added a tablespoon of water until the whole egg was submerged. This took about 4 'layers' of water so I was hoping for 4 beautiful layers."

The Pinstrosity

"The first problem I encountered was the egg not wanting to stay upright. As you can see in the front left glass, the egg just gave up and fell over. Quick death. The more water I added, the less the eggs stood up. The second problem was in the middle of my experiment, I looked at the box of food coloring and noticed that I was using the increments for white cake mix. The next column on the box was for white frosting and lo and behold, the last column had increments for "egg dye" and the amount needed was waaaaaaay different from cake mix. Obviously."

"Wonderful. Just another reason I messed this up. I had that failure instinct before I was even done with this. Shall we see what the final outcome was?"

"Pretty right?! The one on the left even looks like JUPITER!! And the cracks? Beautiful. Not at all what they were supposed to look like."

So I decided to give this a try and see what I could come up with. 

The Investigation:

So the first thing I thought I would try to trouble shoot is how to keep the egg upright. I used two toothpicks to prop up one corner of my glasses, hoping that would lean the egg in the corner enough. Also, eggs float some (the more fresh they are, the less they will float...but still they don't just stay put). If your eggs are cooked fully they won't want to wander as much...but they will still wander some. 

That worked at first. I was able to add water once even and they stayed upright. But the 2nd time I added water the orange egg fell over.   

 So when I went to pour in water in the purple egg I held the egg still and upright with a measuring spoon. That worked wonders! No tippage. 

In then end, this worked out pretty good. Not fabulous, but not bad either. I forgot to take a picture of just the two "ombre" eggs...so here's the whole set of 6 eggs and their various colorings...with the 2 ombre ones mixed in there. 

This method actually wasn't too bad. The hardest part is keeping your egg upright, but that can be done. 

And finally I tried this one out:

The Original Pin

http://www.kimberlycun.com/2011/04/22/how-to-make-surprise-marbled-easter-eggs/

Belle tried this out and here's what she got:

The Pinstrosity

This looked like fun! I was on this one quicker than a raccoon can steal eggs.  

The Investigation:

I had my cooked eggs and went to gently crack the shells...but my method of cooking (which I'll discuss on Saturday) made the shells more brittle than I was expecting and I couldn't get fine little cracks. Not to mention the bottoms (where the air bubble is) fell completely out. Oh well. I poured my food coloring over the egg in the bag and put the two eggs in the fridge for about 40 minutes (while I colored the other eggs). I pulled them out and they were vibrant! I was so excited. And then I rinsed them with water as instructed and the dye mostly rinsed off. 

 But I still had high hopes for the insides. I did the vinegar rinse and then let them dry. Once they were dry I peeled them and here they are:

Not bad. The lines are thicker than I hoped, but at least they are there. I'm wondering if because the egg shells were more brittle than normal if it let in too much dye, causing the thick lines. Here's what they looked like cut open: 

All in all, not bad. I had fun at least. I learned some fun techniques for the future. Next year I think I'll try the tie-dyed silk print eggs. 

Check back on Saturday to see the pin I tested for cooking these eggs!