Thursday, April 4, 2013

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! 



13 comments:

  1. Fresh raw eggs don't float - that is one of the standard tests for fresh eggs! As they age the air sac at the end gets bigger and they float more. So your eggs, judging by the huge cavity at the base of your cooked eggs, were not fresh at all.

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    1. Sadly I've found most store bought eggs aren't fresh and most do float...but that could just be where we live.

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  2. For years our family has made the 'cracked' eggs with packaged easter egg dye. We then use the eggs for our potato salad on Easter day. Everyone loves it.

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  3. I discovered Ukrainian Easter egg decorating this year. They dyes that they use are so much more vibrant than food coloring, or the dyes that come in the kits at the grocery store. They are toxic, however, so you can't eat the eggs after you dye them. You can either decorate them raw, and then blow the insides so you can keep your eggs, or blow them first (but then they float and are harder to decorate.) I wonder if they used the Ukrainian dyes for those eggs, they are so vibrant. Google pysanky eggs if you are interested in purchasing the stuff to make the Ukrainian eggs. They are beautiful, and a lot of fun to make!

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  4. I wonder if they used Pysanky egg dyes. I learned about this technique this year, and had a blast making Ukrainian Easter eggs. Those dyes are much more vibrant, but you can't eat the eggs as the dyes are toxic. You can either blow the egg prior to decorating, or after, if you want to keep the decorated eggs. And you can eat the blown egg if you blow it first. They also create this nifty tool called a Blas Fix to blow the egg quickly and easily.

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  5. I didn't do the volcano eggs but I did try the layered look. If you think hard boiled eggs don't stay put, try using blown eggs like I did. They float. I had to manually hold the egg in the dye for about an hour. I only tried it in blue and the PAAS dye (despite using 3 tablets per cup) covered it OK but didn't dry terribly even. I also did the hard boiled eggs with the coloured veins and they came out OK but not as dark as the ones above. I have a terrible time peeling shells w/o the whites coming off too. You all really need to check my blog; I'm always trying pinterest stuff.

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  6. I love the cracked eggs. I think next year will be the first time my daughter may actually be interested, so we're gonna try it. If I remember. Maybe we'll get some black and orange dye and do it for Halloween.

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  7. I have also found that using the "GEL" food coloring offers brighter colors. I buy mine at Michael's. I think its a little more, but the colors are vibrant and don't take as long to pick up color.

    Well done though! I tried the cracked egg one this year, but didn't let them "soak" nearly long enough. :)

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  8. For the volcano eggs: Egg dye works by bonding directly to the shell or via hydrogen bonds to the protein in the egg shell. Acids (vinegar) aids in both types of bonding. The volcano eggs come out so pale because there is not enough acid present for a long enough period of time to create the amount of bonding required for the more vibrant colors.

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  9. Couldn't you do the ombré in reverse? Submerge the whole egg then use one of the egg wands to slowly lift the egg out in stages.

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    1. That was kinda my thoughts too, but I figured I should probably test the method how they said first. Their method means you don't have to try and hold the egg steady though...but it does waste dye as you dilute it.

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  10. The pin for the volcano eggs actually says to do the painting-then-volcanoing numerous times on EACH egg. It's only mentioned once, though and easy to miss.

    In the numbered steps she has, basically: brush on some paint, drip on other paint colors, pour vinegar over and watch it bubble; repeat these steps until you get bored *then go to the next egg".

    Honestly, she should make that more prominent and more clear. Dunno if you'd get the SUPER vibrant results. Although I notice she didn't say HOW many times to repeat... Maybe it took dozens of layers per egg.

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  11. I did a couple ombre eggs by using painter's tape and peeling off a layer after dying. They weren't PERFECT but it worked okay and looked neat. I think if you rinsed between dips it might help, too, but I was lazy.

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