Onion skin eggs

A little while ago I saw an instruction on how to make decorated eggs using flat object (leaves, flowers) as a paint mask and a pair of thin old tights to hold the mask in place. The dye that was used made me feel really nostalgic — it was skins of brown onions, one of the two dyes my granny used to color the chicken eggs for Easter. Second one, quite surprisingly, was solution of brilliant green, an antiseptic that gave bright emerald color and made the eggs look inedible.

So I started to accumulate onion skins. However, when the time came to dyeing I discovered that there is not a pair of tights anywhere (well, it is Fuerteventura). So I improvised with simple masks made of whatever passes for wax in the candles these days. The actual dyeing is really simple — just boil your eggs together with the onion skins (don't try to blow out the content of the egg first — empty eggshells refuse to sink into water)

Now looking at it, I shouldn't have bothered, the color is beautiful in itself, without additional patterns, plus the waxy substance dissolved once the water started to boil, giving access for the dye to the eggshell and partially destroying the pattern. Still, here they are

More photos of eggs on Shutterstock