When I sewed baby items for a living, I sometimes dyed my fabric using shaving cream and fiber reactive dyes. The swirly/marble-ized effect was so unique and pretty! Last year we had fun dyeing our imprinted Easter eggs with onion skins, but this year I wanted to try something completely different. It occurred to me that if my marbled fabric was pretty, marbled eggs would be even better! I had to try it!
I started by soaking my eggs in full strength white vinegar for a few minutes each so that the food coloring would be more vibrant.
While the eggs were being vinegar-ized, I filled the bottom of a shallow baking pan with about 1/2 inch of inexpensive shaving cream – the dollar store stuff works great! I randomly dropped small amounts of different colors of liquid food coloring every inch or two around the surface of the shaving cream. I used McCormick assorted and neon food coloring. With a skewer, you could use a toothpick too, I lightly stirred the color into the shaving cream. Be sure not to over stir – if your colors mix too much, you’ll just end up with brown shaving cream. The next step is very, very important – use gloves! I thought I didn’t need to and today I have an unplanned marbled manicure. ;-/
Place each hard boiled egg on the top of the shaving cream and roll the egg along the bottom of the pan, right through the shaving cream until the surface of the egg is covered. For every 6 to 7 eggs we dyed, we’d start the process over with new shaving cream and new dye so that our dyes wouldn’t become too muddy. Remove the egg and let it sit in all of it’s colorful glory for as long as possible before removing the excess shaving cream. I think we managed to allow ours to rest for about an hour.
I rinsed a few of them with clear water and although they were very pretty, I was hoping for a brighter result rather than a pastel result so I gently blotted each egg with a paper towel to remove the shaving cream and behold your brilliant, kaleidoscopic creations! After sitting in the fridge for a day or two, I removed each egg from the carton and very lightly applied a small amount of olive oil to enhance the color and sheen. The kids loved making these and we all had so much fun oohing and aahing over our favorites.
Be sure to share your creations with us on our Facebook page, crafty friends! I just can’t wait to see all of the color variations! 
7 Comments
Very cool idea! I’m going to have to try this with my kiddos
These are so pretty! I want to try this with my kids, but I’m wondering, did you eat them/are they safe to eat?
Hi Amy, we did not eat them – we will just use them for our egg hunting adventures and decor.
Are you able to use gel food coloring for the egg dye, instead of liquid food coloring?
Hi Steph, I think it would depend on how thick your gel is. I imagine if it’s pretty thick it might be harder to incorporate into the shaving cream. If you give it a try, let us know about your results!
I just mentioned this post on my blog Carli (http://photographyellipsis.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/les-oeufs-de-paques/). We enjoyed making these over Easter, it’s a great project. Many thanks,
Evie
Thanks so much for featuring our link, Evie! I’m sorry your eggs didn’t turn out how you had envisioned. I had a few experimental eggs that didn’t turn out too great either but it was fun anyway!
Thanks again!
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[...] lunch table centrepiece, they didn’t turn out quite as well as the ones in the instructions (http://www.simplynotable.com/2013/dyed-easter-egg-roll/ - check it out, it’s great!)…but they had the potential Plus, making the mess was fun [...]