The different tones of tea, center is shorter time black tea, 2 darkest are black tea, upper right is chamomile and lower left a bancha green
Tea dyed eggs on a bed of tea 'grass' by Cassandra Vincent
I've been wanting to try tea dyed eggs. I knew there had to have been a ton of people who have done them already and sure enough I found a great post by Lu Ann over at The Teacup of Life blog with a good clear baseline on how to go about tea dying eggs. Here is the post: http://theteacupoflife.com/2017/04/diy-tea-dyed-easter-eggs.html
I thought this would be another opportunity to use some of the tea that was given to me that is no longer drinkable and that I've been using for art projects. So I pulled out three:
1) an old CTC black tea (CTC meaning 'crush'[or cut], tear, curl' processing method which makes for small even tea that looks a bit like pellets)
2) Bancha tea fannings and
3) chamomile tea bags.
I did use a large amount of tea to water ratio to get a deeper color - about 2 TB for a 10 oz. cup. I did use vinegar as well - about 1 tsp per mug. I admit, I didn't have the patience to leave them in overnight so I only left the eggs in for 15 min to one hour depending on depth of color desired. The black tea of course produced the deepest tone when the egg was left in for a long time, but produced a lovely pale brown when left in for 15 minutes (that is the 'Tea' egg in the photo above). I dabbed at one of the dark brown eggs with a paper towel after I pulled it out of the tea to give it a kind of mottled look which I really like. The green tea produced a light but pleasing green. The chamomile was very underwhelming though, only giving a pale yellow cast even though it was in for the longest time.
I used a white crayon to write 'TEA' on one egg prior to dying to play with the idea and found it worked really well. Though writing with white on white was a bit of an act of faith as I couldn't actually see what I was doing until after the dye job, lol.
I know that colored eggs are often looked at as an Easter thing, but I think they'd be a lovely way to plate hard boiled eggs for a brunch at any time of the year. I encourage you to explore the beauty of the earthy tones and the fun of creating designs as the muse strikes you. Enjoy!
I've been wanting to try tea dyed eggs. I knew there had to have been a ton of people who have done them already and sure enough I found a great post by Lu Ann over at The Teacup of Life blog with a good clear baseline on how to go about tea dying eggs. Here is the post: http://theteacupoflife.com/2017/04/diy-tea-dyed-easter-eggs.html
I thought this would be another opportunity to use some of the tea that was given to me that is no longer drinkable and that I've been using for art projects. So I pulled out three:
1) an old CTC black tea (CTC meaning 'crush'[or cut], tear, curl' processing method which makes for small even tea that looks a bit like pellets)
2) Bancha tea fannings and
3) chamomile tea bags.
I did use a large amount of tea to water ratio to get a deeper color - about 2 TB for a 10 oz. cup. I did use vinegar as well - about 1 tsp per mug. I admit, I didn't have the patience to leave them in overnight so I only left the eggs in for 15 min to one hour depending on depth of color desired. The black tea of course produced the deepest tone when the egg was left in for a long time, but produced a lovely pale brown when left in for 15 minutes (that is the 'Tea' egg in the photo above). I dabbed at one of the dark brown eggs with a paper towel after I pulled it out of the tea to give it a kind of mottled look which I really like. The green tea produced a light but pleasing green. The chamomile was very underwhelming though, only giving a pale yellow cast even though it was in for the longest time.
I used a white crayon to write 'TEA' on one egg prior to dying to play with the idea and found it worked really well. Though writing with white on white was a bit of an act of faith as I couldn't actually see what I was doing until after the dye job, lol.
I know that colored eggs are often looked at as an Easter thing, but I think they'd be a lovely way to plate hard boiled eggs for a brunch at any time of the year. I encourage you to explore the beauty of the earthy tones and the fun of creating designs as the muse strikes you. Enjoy!
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