Decorating Easter Eggs - DIY Step-By-Step Tutorial

Decorating Easter eggs is an old tradition in many countries and it differs not only from country to country but also from region to region. Transylvania has a nice egg decorating tradition, kept alive for centuries, which unfortunately are going to disappear in bit cities but I hope will live in villages.

I've been planning to decorate some eggs this year the old fashion way and also to try out a technique that is very interesting. The other reason I wanted to do this is to give my niece a chance to see how this is done. She's a creative person too and likes these things, also I believe she has to learn Easter egg decoration.

We had out first attempt last week, which failed unfortunately. The technique we wanted to use involves a special marker which you can't just buy from the store, it needs to be created manually. I found a YouTube video and followed the instructions but the marker I created was not suitable for the task.

Yesterday we got together again and decided to decorate eggs using leaves and onion peels, which is also a very old tradition. I prefer to keep it healthy, that's why I'm using onion peals, no chemicals. Believe me, it does the job, no need to buy dye from the shop. I admit, you can only get one color but that's fine, I have no problem with that.

Here's the process.

Cooked the eggs and let them cool off. Put the leaves in water, then place it on the egg and make sure there are no wrinkles, the leaf is nicely sticking to the eggshell.

Wrap it in stockings and stretch it till it's tight, tie it on the other end with a string.

Put the onion peels in a pot. You can use any kind of onion peels, red, yellow, whatever you have it's fine. If you want a darker color, make sure you use more red.

Place the eggs on the onion peel bed, cover with more onion peals and fill the pot with water. Let it cook for at least 20 minutes, then let it stay in the water for 1 or 2 hours. Cut the stockings, take the eggs out, clean them with a paper towel and use a bit of fat or oil to make them shiny.

If you do it right, the spot where the leaf was remains lighter and the rest should be dark red, colored by the onion peel.

I'm not exactly proud of the result, we could have done a better job but I'm glad the leaf is still visible.
It's advisable to use white eggs for a much better result but the problem is, you can't find white eggs here, I have no idea why. A few month ago I bought some gut the eggshells were so fragile, I broke one when unpacked them.

If you don't want to go through all the hustle with the leaves, you can cook the eggs with the onion peels and you get some eggs like in the photo above, which was taken last year when I dyed eggs just with onion peals, without using leaves or any other stencil.

Now you're probably asking why on earth would I go through this process when you can buy all kind of eggs already decorated and can also buy egg dye kits, which is true. However, I prefer natural dye as it's more healthier. Not once I've seen the egg inside colored or when I tried to peal the eggs, my hand got red or whatever the color the egg was. I can guarantee you, this onion dye won't transfer from the eggs to your hand.

source

I've selected the image above to show you what can you do if you do it right. Aren't those eggs beautiful? The source says you can use red cabbage leaves along with the onion peels. Cabbage can also be a nice source of natural color, I'm going to try it out next time for sure. I need to learn to do it right.