Monochromatic Easter Eggs

In case you don’t already know, I love pretty things. For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a love/hate relationship with dying Easter eggs. It’s such a fun, creative process, and yet, it’s so hard to get the perfect egg. And then once you get it? You have to crack it open to eat it and discard all your hard work! Such torture! But I’ve found the perfect solution. I started blowing out eggs for decorating last year and I’m hooked! It takes some work to keep the shell intact while you get all the goo out from inside, but once you do, you can keep your decorated eggs year after year!!

Blowing out the eggs is the first step. I’m sure you can buy some kind of fancy tool for this, but I just use supplies I have around the house. I used my craft poker tool this time, which worked nicely, and have also used an embroidery needle (with thimble to help push it into the egg). Make a small hole in each end of the egg – the larger the hole, the easier it is to blow out the insides, but also the more visible. Then, use a flexible straw – I’ve been using the plastic straws from my kids’ cups – suction one end of the straw over a hole – then blow into the straw and the egg insides will blow out the other side. It’s a slow process – I did my eggs over a few hours time while binge-watching Hart of Dixie, so that was fun. Run a little warm water through the empty egg and blow it out to get the insides clean. Then, set your eggs in a crate to dry out overnight.

This year, I used white and brown and green eggs from my hens. I did most of these monochromatic eggs with white eggs (actually, I had to BUY eggs because I only have 1 hen that lays white eggs). After dying a few dozen, I wanted to see how some of the colored eggs would fare and they just added a great level of further variety to the pink and blue hues. If you have access to brown eggs, give it a try – but, if you don’t, you can still make gorgeous monochromatic Easter eggs!

PAAS dye kits come with quite a variety of dye tabs. I used yellow, green, blue, red, pink, and orange to make a set of blue hues and a set of pink hues. There are also kits with different shades of blue to try. Follow the package instructions to dissolve the dye tabs and prepare your egg dye.

Since the blown-out eggs are empty, they float rather than sink down in the cup of egg dye. This makes dying the eggs more of a hands-on process – you will push and hold the egg down under the surface of the dye. For the lightest shades of color, quickly dip and roll the egg in the dye and immediately remove it. I like to set the drying eggs on the paper egg carton, which absorbs the moisture so that it doesn’t pool and unevenly color just some parts of the egg. For darker shades, hold or bob the egg under the dye for longer periods of time. Combine similar colors – like pink and orange, or red and pink – to get a variety of hues. In addition, using differently colored eggs (brown eggs) from the start will give you a whole additional set of hues to mix in!

My very darkest eggs here were done with dark brown eggs in red dye (and dark brown eggs in blue and green dye for the other set).

Display your monochromatic eggs in glass apothecary jars or set out in bowls! Aren’t they beautiful?

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Here are more fun Easter ideas:

Glitter Easter Eggs

Easter Party Printables