It’s Earth Day! Which is odd only because normally Easter happens much earlier in the season, so it’s rare for the two to overlap. I’d love to talk more about Earth Day, but I’ve got to start on my own Easter dinner plans and decorations, so today I’m going to sit at the junction of both holidays and talk about natural dyeing.

There are a lot of advantages to using kitchen and garden-based dyes. They are generally easy to find and inexpensive. They are safe, meaning you can have them around kids and pets with little concern. You can use them in your regular cookware. When you are done you can compost the leftovers, and you have the assurance that anything that ends up in the water supply is safe. The colors may not be as bright as the artificial dyes, but they generally lovely and closer to actual spring colors.

One of the interesting things about dyeing with natural ingredients is that it can be done on a lot of materials. Yarn, roving, some fabrics, possibly hair, and definitely eggs. If you try eggs, please remember that most methods have you boil the eggs for 15 minutes in the dye, so if you want hard-boiled eggs you can kill two birds with one stone.

There are many different options, but for almost all of them you’ll want to have some vinegar handy. Below there are a few lists of suggested materials for dyes, but play around as well. You may find that the thing you were sure would be red ends up green, and the surprises are (pretty much) always fun.

About.com has a great list of materials by dye color.
What’s Cooking America has another list with more options.

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Easter eggs! Egg salad! Deviled eggs! I’m getting ahead of myself! Before we talk about the wonderful things you can do with Easter eggs you have to… well, Easter-ize them. Here are a few of my favorite methods for getting pretty eggs:

Photo courtesy of Marielle Jordan

Dyeing using silk – In the above photo my friend Marielle used silk ties for the bottom three eggs and silk blouses for the top three.

Image courtesy of MarthaStewart.com

Napkin decoupage on eggs

Washi paper covered eggs – See a beautiful example at http://www.flickr.com/photos/12163087@N04/2692105345/

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