Silk-dyed Easter eggs

Leslie came to visit me on Easter weekend, and the one big Easter project I was really eager to try was dying eggs with pieces of silk! I saw the idea for how to do this on Our Best Bites, which is an excellent blog full of creative ideas, recipes, and crafts. When I saw the pictures of the silk-dyed Easter eggs, they looked so beautiful that I desperately wanted to try it myself. Plus, it didn't look that hard. Basically you take old silk ties, wrap them pattern-side down on the egg, secure with a twisty tie, wrap again with a piece of an old pillowcase, then hard-boil the eggs for 20 minutes, and voila! The dye from the ties transfers to the eggs and you get wonderfully intricate designs. (Complete instructions can be found here).

Leslie and I put off buying the ties till the last minute, but luckily we found a thrift store that was open on Easter and picked up six ties with cool patterns. Then we went to work cutting apart the ties, wrapping them around the eggs, and waiting while they boiled. After they were done, we let the eggs cool for awhile. When we finally got to open the little packages we were so excited to see how the eggs had turned out! Below we have pictures of the ties we used and how the eggs turned out (kind of a before-and-after).

This one turned out to be such a pretty blue!

I also love this one. It looks kind of old-fashioned/vintage.

Here's one that didn't turn out so well. The yellow and green didn't transfer very well at all.

This one is pretty. I love that the colors became lighter on the egg- very Eastery.

This is one of my favorites. I love how bright and beautiful the blue and pink look, and I love the swirly design!

This one is my favorite of them all. The pattern turned out so clearly and you can see all the details! 



 I told one of my friends about this idea, and her eggs turned out beautifully, too. I already have some ideas on how to get better results next year. I'm going to get ties that have very busy patterns, because I loved the more detailed eggs the best. I'm also going to try to wrap the egg so that more of the surface is in contact with the tie. The less folds and ruffles in the tie the better, because the dye transfers more easily and you get less streaky parts on the egg. But all in all, I loved how our eggs turned out and I'm excited to try again next Easter!