I've been fortunate this Easter weekend to dye eggs not once, but twice. Both ways were wildly different from each other.
On Friday night, I dyed Easter eggs using a typical kit. My friends, Maggie and BJ, brought out .
On Saturday night, my friend Karen, who is a Pinterest addict, found a unique way to dye Easter eggs using silk ties. She and another friend, Gina, immediately ran out to the thrift shop and came back with nine silk ties and a carton of eggs.
Materials Needed
- An assortment of 100 percent silk ties
- Twisty ties
- An old white pillowcase or white sheet
- 1/4 cup of vinegar
- Water
Instructions
- Deconstruct the tie by snipping at the seams and removing the lining so all that is left is silk.
- Cut pieces that are large enough to cover whole eggs.
- Wrap the raw eggs in the piece of the tie. Be sure that the outer printed side of the tie is facing the egg.
- Tie the fabric with a twisty tie as tightly as you can. The more fabric touching the egg, the better.
- If you are displaying the eggs upright in cups, put the twisty tie on top of the egg, as shown in the photo gallery.
- If you want the best part of the design to be on the widest part of the egg, wrap and tie the egg horizontally.
- Once you finish wrapping all the eggs in silk, wrap them again with cut-out pieces of the white pillowcase and secure the fabric with another twisty tie. Karen and Gina didn't have a white pillowcase so they used a green-hued piece of fabric. We recommend the white pillowcase.
- Put all the egg bundles into a pot of water and add 1/4 cup of vinegar.
- Bring the water to a boil for about 20 minutes.
- Remove the eggs from the water and let them cool. Once you can handle the eggs, you can then remove the fabric from the egg and see what beauty you created.
Not being the most crafty gal, I have to say that this was easy to do and fun. We found that the kinds of silk ties that yielded the best designs were the ties with darker hues -- reds, blacks, dark purples and blues.
But the lighter colored ties resulted in pretty pastel hues and all the eggs were beautiful.
We decided that eating the eggs might not the best idea and upon scouring the Internet, found that some crafty folks advised against it.
If you try this technique, let us know how you did and feel free to add your photos to the gallery. We would love to see them!
