paint cut paste

i entertained the thought of naturally dyeing easter eggs this year. i’ve wanted to every year, and even found a great tutorial on martha stewart for veggie dyed eggs, but then we paased anyway. 99 cents for a paas kit is hard to beat, especially when compared to purchasing beets, yellow onions, cabbage, etc.

we did, however, try out some new strategies we saw all on the web this season. good stuff.

like using a rubber band on the egg (and double dipping) to block out certain areas:

and criss crossing electrical tape to make a grid (yellow and blue make green lesson here.)

i also tried to make a “cracked egg” effect on, well, a cracked egg. kinda cute.

as stepford as i feel saying so, martha is a genius. (or rather the people who work for her at her empire are geniuses.) i mean seriously,  look at this slideshow of eggs!!!

we did the usual crayon resist thang.

and all in all, we had some good springy fun together! happy springtime of blooming and rebirthing! it’s an egggggscellent time of year, isn’t it?

and they made for a wonderful breakfast –

especially when all dolled up like chicks paired with lemonade scones… thanks to just jenn’s recipe blog.

somehow N acquired too many white shirts this season, and we’re big fans of color over here. i saw this cute and easy idea for tie-dying on make & takes, and decided to try it out with N. first we chose a white tank top that could use some color. we wet the shirt with water and wrung it out in the sink. then we put it on a plastic surface.

pre-dyed

N chose three colors of tissue paper that she wanted on the shirt, and we began to apply tissue paper to the front of the shirt. some people make designs out of the tissue paper, but N and i just applied it at random.

N applies the tissue paper by herself

after the dry tissue is applied, i used a squirt bottle full of water to wet the tissue very well. the tissue dye bleeds into the cotton shirt to stain it (it also stains hands – wear gloves!)

all wet

i then transferred the wet shirt onto a baking sheet that has edges. i used the advice on make & takes and kept the tissue on the shirt while pouring white vinegar over the entire thing. it looked like this:

pouring on the vinegar

then i put the whole tray and shirt outside in our shed to dry. it took a little over a day, but i live in a really humid place (for now…:) after i removed the tissue, the dye had transferred in a really cool way!

a now-colorful shirt

i put the shirt between two pieces of fabric and ironed it on high to set the dye. (you can also flip it in the dryer on hot.) i laundered the shirt and now it’s ready to wear!