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Natural Dye Colored Egg Project Recreated for Country Living Magazine

March 12, 2011

Country Living Magazine April 2011 Issue

Do the eggs on the Country Living Magazine’s April, 2011 cover look familiar?

Do you remember this Natural Dye Colored Easter Egg post that I did for Easter last year?

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Now that the April issue of Country Living Magazine is officially on the newsstand, we can finally announce this exciting news!

We were contacted by an Editor from Country Living Magazine back in January to see if I would be interested in recreating this Natural Dye Colored Egg Project for the April issue of their magazine. And, of course, I said yes! :-)

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

It’s true; the eggs beautifully displayed on this pedestal were made by me, in my kitchen in Southern California, and were carefully packaged and shipped overnight to County Living in New York City for their photo shoot!

The Editor had originally planned on the project being featured in the craft section of the magazine, but we were thrilled when we received the news that the Editors decided to feature the project on the cover. And the project is also featured on their website in the 10 Adorable Easter Craft Projects section.

If you’ve come to our site after reading about us in Country Living Magazine, we would like to extend a HUGE welcome to you!

If you like this project, we want to encourage you to Subscribe to our Feed and Like us on Facebook. We have plans to share more craft projects here on our site, as well as continue with our recipes, beauty product reviews and tips we discover that help us in our quest to live a fit, healthy and responsible lifestyle that’s still fun!

We don’t claim to be experts in any one thing, but what we do know is what women care about and like to talk about.  That’s what we love to share with you here on BigSisLilSis.

To celebrate this project making the cover of Country Living Magazine and to welcome our new readers, we decided to give away a Country Living book. And since the Editor at Country Living was so kind to donate FOUR books to us, we’ll be having a Country Living Book Giveaway each week for the next four weeks.

To kick-start this series of giveaways, the first book we’ll be giving away to one lucky reader is this gorgeous book!

Restore. Recycle. Repurpose. Create a Beautiful Home

(A Country Living Book)

Restore. Recycle. Repurpose. A Country Living Book

And when I say gorgeous, I mean gorgeous! I LOVE this book!

(I really wanted to keep this book for myself, but it’s more fun to give than receive, right?) :-)

This book is full of beautiful photos and inspiring ideas on how everyone can create a home that’s as harmonious with the environment as it is beautiful. The book is jam-packed with great, practical advice on ways you can “go green” in each room of your home.

Do you want to know how this lovely book can be yours?

It’s easy!

Here are the details!

You can do any or all of these for a chance to win:

  • Leave us a comment. Do you have any fun or unique ways to decorate eggs for Easter? Or any fun tips on “going green” in your home?
  • Subscribe to our Feed and leave us a comment letting us know if you already subscribe or if you’re a new subscriber.
  • Subscribe via email. (It’s easy to do in our top right sidebar!) Leave a comment if you already subscribe via email or if you’re a new subscriber.
  • Tweet this post and leave us a comment that you tweeted it.
  • Stumble this post and leave another comment to let us know it’s stumbled.

So, there you have it. You can enter up to seven times! Since the winner will be chosen at random.org; obviously, the more times you enter, the better your odds of winning this beautiful book.

This giveaway will officially end at midnight on Friday, March 18th and on Saturday, March 19th, we’ll announce the winner and the next book giveaway!

(I’ll let ya in on a little secret. If you follow us on Twitter or Like BigSisLilSis on Facebook, we’ll be giving you some bonus chances to enter during these next six days.)


Mabel's Labels www.mabel.ca

~LilSis

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Can we just pretend it’s still Easter?

April 5, 2010

I know we’ve thrown a lot of Easter projects at you over the last week or so, but believe it or not, I have a couple more!  After this post, I promise, no more Easter talk til 2011.

I worked on these little White Chocolate Smiley Face Easter Bunnies over a period of days, but then guess what happened when I was finally putting the post together on Saturday afternoon?  My internet went down, of course!  Ding dang Time Warner employee accidentally disconnected me when he was working on someone else’s service in the hood, and they couldn’t get anyone out here to fix it til Monday morning.

So call me selfish, but I am not going to let all that work go to waste without showing you the bunnies!  I don’t care that Easter is over!  :-D   Let’s just pretend that it’s still Easter!

Now, on with it.  I won’t bore you with instructions that you won’t need til next March, but I do want to show you the photos.  These are the White Chocolate Smiley Face Easter Bunnies.

Smiley Face White Chocolate Easter Bunnies

Smiley Face White Chocolate Easter Bunnies

Smiley Face White Chocolate Easter Bunnies

Oh, and one more thing…Chocolate Fudge Easter Eggs; molded and decorated in pink, of course!

Chocolate Fudge Easter Eggs

Now, we can all go back to our after-Easter worlds!  Thanks for indulging me!

~BigSis

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Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

April 2, 2010

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Are you tired of coloring Easter Eggs the same old way? I am. I’m tired of just plopping a dye tablet in a cup, adding a little vinegar and water and taking turns putting the eggs into the cups. Boring!

And, if you’d like to be a little more health conscious and avoid the artificial dyes, you may want to consider using one of these natural dyes to color your eggs this year!

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

This was a little time consuming, but it was one of those projects that was so much fun because the end result is somewhat of a surprise. It reminded me of how I always feel when I open up my kiln after a glaze firing. It’s like Christmas! The anticipation almost kills me every time. When I had more time for ceramics, I would almost always find a way to incorporate some leaf or flower impressions in most of my projects. In my wall tiles and mosaic tiles, I’ve used a lot of the same leaves and flowers that I used for this project.

Alright, sorry I’m rambling about ceramics; let’s get back to the Easter eggs. This was my first experiment in making natural dyes so I was winging it a bit and didn’t have any idea of how these would turn out. I looked over a few recipes online but didn’t use one in particular, just the basic method, so let’s get started.

First, gather your leaves, flowers or stickers that you plan to use for this project. Here’s what I used.

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Next, depending on which variation you want to make, you’ll use one of these.

1 head of Purple cabbage (If making the blue eggs.)
Yellow onion skins (I used the skin from 3 onions for this rust color.)
1 bag of fresh cranberries (For the disappointing brownish color.)

Whichever color you decide to make will determine the size of your pan. Obviously the whole head of purple cabbage will take a larger pan than if you use one of the other two ingredients.

Once you decide which color you are going to make, use the appropriate size pan. But, before you add the vegetable or fruit to your pan, place an egg in the pan and fill it with enough water to cover the top of the egg by at least an inch. Then remove the egg. Don’t add more water. If you use too much water, the color of the dye will end up being too diluted.

Place the sliced cabbage, onion skins, or cranberries into the pan and boil for thirty minutes, covered to minimize evaporation. Allow water to cool slightly, and then strain contents over a bowl, pressing pulp to remove any remaining liquid.

Rinse the pan, pour in dye water, cover, and return to low heat to keep warm while preparing eggs.

Here are the natural dyes all strained and waiting for the eggs.


Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Next, you’ll want to gather a few more items.

Vinegar
Scissors
Pantyhose
Twist ties
Slotted Spoon
Paper towels
Vegetable oil

Now, cut the pantyhose into 4 inch pieces.

(Some instructions I saw said that you needed to buy several pairs of knee highs and just use the toes, but I just bought two 99 cent pair of pantyhose, cut them into pieces and it worked fine.)

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Now for the fun part.

One at a time, place leaves, flowers, or stickers on the egg as desired. Some of the plant materials will stick better if you dip them in water first.


Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Place the egg in your hand, and gently place the egg inside the hose, make sure your design is still how you want it, and then pull the hose securely it the back and secure with a twist tie. (I thought this was easier than trying to tie in a knot while holding everything in place.)


Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Trim the excess hose from the back.


Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Repeat with remaining eggs.

Return dye to a gentle boil and stir in vinegar. I used 4 T. for the purple cabbage and 3 T. for the onion skins and cranberries since they were in smaller pans.

Here are all my eggs ready to go into the dye.


Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Gently lower the eggs into the pan and boil for 30 minutes. Turn off heat, cover, and let stand for 2- 3 hours, or until desired color is obtained.

Remove eggs with a slotted spoon and place back on egg carton to cool slightly.

Here’s what they look like after you’ve taken them out of the dye.


Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Carefully untie the twist tie or cut the hose and unwrap eggs. Carefully pull off and discard any remaining plant materials or stickers.


Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

I let mine sit for an extra 5 or 10 minutes after I unwrapped them just so they could cool a bit more.

Dampen a paper towel lightly with oil and buff eggs until shiny. Remove excess oil with clean paper towel.

Be very careful not to wipe too hard as some of the dye might come off.

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Rust Natural Dyed Easter Eggs

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Blue Natural Dyed Easter Eggs

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Light Brown Natural Dyed Easter Eggs

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Natural Dye Colored Easter Eggs

Natural Dyed Easter Eggs

Like I said before, this project was pretty time consuming, but it was so much fun for me! I feel like I got my creative juices stirring again. :-)

A few notes:

I kept one egg without any decoration to put in each dye color and I didn’t care for any of those three at all.

I used just plain yellow onion skin on one egg in each dye color and a couple of those made some beautiful marbling. The one with the onion skin in the purple cabbage dye was probably my favorite. It had a gorgeous brownish-blueish marbling effect.

I was disappointed in the brownish color that I got from the cranberry dye, but on one egg where I used a purple flower, it gave off a beautiful blueish color in the center of the white flower. I don’t think that I would bother using cranberry again for this project. I was expecting a purplish color, not brown.

The dark rust color from the onion skins is probably my favorite. And this dye didn’t even need to sit for two hours before it intensified in color. You could probably even take these out after 30 minutes or so.

I just love this method of using the leaves and flowers for contrast in color on these eggs. I’m already thinking of ways to use this for another project.

I should have posted this sooner, but I hope you give these a try if you have a little time before Easter!


Walgreens Photo Gifts 234x60

~LilSis

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Marshmallow White Chocolate Easter Bunnies

April 1, 2010

Marshmallow White Chocolate Easter Bunnies

When you hear the words “Marshmallow” and “Easter”, do you think of Peeps or maybe those super-sugary marshmallow eggs with the hard sugar shell?  I don’t because I don’t like either of those Easter candies.  To me, they’re the Easter version of the hard-as-a-rock peanut butter taffy wrapped in black or orange paper that you got at Halloween as a kid, and tried to pawn off on your unsuspecting little brothers in exchange for their chocolate candy bars!

I have a new Easter marshmallow treat to share with you, and these also have white chocolate.  This project isn’t quite as fancy and classy as the Easter Bird’s Candy Nests that LilSis made yesterday, but they’re pretty fun to make and I think kids would have a ball putting them together.

The key is to get yourself a candy mold like this.  It has bunny heads and bunny bases with feet and tails (bunny butts).

Easter Bunny Mold

I got mine at my cake supply store, but you can find them online too.  I have bunches of these kinds of molds.  They’re only about $2.50 each, and you can use them for chocolate, candy melts or even soaps.  Buy just one or two, and you’ll be addicted to them.  You can customize candy for any kid’s party theme and color scheme.  Wrapped up in foil papers, people will be shocked that you made these cute candies yourself.  I made little green frog chocolates for a kid’s party once, and the kids were thrilled!

So back to this project.  Here’s what you do:

  • Melt some candy melts or chocolate wafers (I like the Guittard White Chocolate Wafers; they come in mint too).  I nuke them for 30 seconds, then stir, and repeat til all are melted.
  • Pour the melted chocolate into a squeeze bottle, and fill the cavities in the mold.  Once it’s filled, tap the mold gently on the counter to bring any air bubbles to the surface.  Add more chocolate if needed.
  • Refrigerate the mold for a few minutes until the shapes are set and cold.  Unmold.
  • Now the fun part!  Use more melted chocolate to lightly coat large marshmallows, then immediately roll in shredded coconut.  Chill for a few minutes to set.
  • Decorate the bunny faces if you like.  I used food markers, but they tended to slide around a little on the chocolate, so you’ll probably come up with better ideas than BigSis-in-a-hurry did!
  • Add a dab of melted chocolate to the bottom of the marshmallow and gently press onto the base.  Then, with a dab of melted chocolate, add the bunny face to the front of the marshmallow.

You just made a Marshmallow White Chocolate Easter Bunny!

Marshmallow White Chocolate Easter Bunny

~BigSis

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Easter Bird’s Nest Candy

March 31, 2010

I can’t believe Easter is just four days from today! If you’re like me and don’t enough time to make a cute Easter Bunny Cake or Easter Basket Cupcakes, here’s a quick and easy candy treat.

I decided to try two different versions of the Easter Bird’s Nests. They’re a little messy, but I think they turned out pretty cute.

For the first batch, I used this recipe that calls for butterscotch chips and peanut butter. If I made these again, I would just eliminate the peanut butter. These were more gooey and took longer to set than the ones with just the chips.

Bird’s Nests

2 c. butterscotch chips
1 c. peanut butter
2 c. Chow Mein noodles
Any egg shaped Easter candy (I used Robins eggs and M&M’)

Cover a baking sheet or pan with waxed or parchment paper. Either melt the butterscotch chips and peanut butter in the top of a double boiler or in the microwave (heat 1 minute, stir, continue heating in 10 second increments until melted and smooth.) Stir in Chow Mein noodles. With buttered fingers shape mixture into one big nest or individual ones. Place on prepared pan. Refrigerate until firm. Fill with jelly beans or other candy.

For the second batch, I simply melted 2 cups white chocolate chips and added 2 cups Chow Mein noodles. I thought the little white nests would look cute with some grass inside them so I made some green grass by adding a few drops of green food coloring to a little coconut and shaking it up inside a baggie.

I think that I like the white chocolate version better but I could have used an extra cup or more of Chow Mein noodles because they seemed a little runnier than they should have been. These firmed up really quickly though which makes it easier to get them decorated if you’re in a hurry.

So, what’s next in our Easter treat lineup? Come back tomorrow to find out! :-)

~LilSis

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Easter Basket Cupcakes!

March 30, 2010

Easter Basket Cupcakes

Happy early Easter, everyone!  And happy good-excuse-to-use-pink-holiday!  I DO love me some pink, and I really love pink with green.  But actually, I love pink with any and every other color.  Pink is probably the most perfect color in the rainbow, don’t you think?  Ok, BigSis, you’re getting off track.  Focus, focus, focus, girl!  We’re talking about Easter baking today, not your obsession with all things rosy.

Sorry…back to the program!  I love Easter, I love color, and I love baking.  Voila!  Easter Basket Cupcakes!

You can use any recipe of course.  Since I’m 3 months into doing the vegan thing, I baked up a batcheroo of my all-time favorite Pumpkin Walnut Bread.  I baked tons of it for the last couple of bake sales, more for Christmas gifts, and I’m still baking it.  I can’t get enough of it, so here it is in its’ cute little Easter basket outfit!

I found these super-delicious Wilton Easter Basket Cupcake Wrappers at my Michael’s store, and I bet your local craft store has them too.  They may even be on sale this week like mine were!

Instructions?  I got ‘em for you:

  • Bake any cupcakes you adore in a cute paper liner.
  • Let them cool, then frost or not.  I chose not.
  • Convince some coconut to pretend that it’s Easter grass.  I added about 6 drops of liquid green food coloring to about half a bag of shredded coconut in a ziploc baggie.  Mush it around until the coconut/grass is all pretty green.
  • Add a pile of coconut/grass to each cupcake, and top with some jelly beans or whatever for an extra shout of faux egg color.  I didn’t have jelly beans and don’t really like them anywho, so I wasn’t about to buy any.  I used Skittles and M&Ms.  You’re the boss of these cupcakes, so you do what you want!
  • Make the little basket wrappers, and secure with tape to be sure they don’t come unhinged at an inappropriate time.
  • Drop each cupcake into the Easter Basket wrapper, and add the handle.  I just tucked it into the sides so it would be easy to remove for faster cupcake access!

Easter Basket Cupcake

That’s it!  Hoppy Easter!

~BigSis

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Easter Candy Gifts

March 29, 2010

The April 2010 issue of Martha Stewart Living is loaded with creative and crafty ideas for celebrating Easter. If I had the patience, I would have attempted the adorable Easter Egg Sugar cookies, but I knew they would never have come out as beautiful as the ones in the magazine.  So when I saw the adorable Easter Candy Parade, I thought these cute little jars might be something I could put together since they didn’t require any baking! :-)

These are perfect little gifts for teachers, friends, neighbors or coworkers. I think they’re a lot more fun and colorful than just giving someone a bag of candy or a chocolate bunny for a Happy Easter gift.

WalMart had a huge assortment of pretty, colorful Easter candy this year. I used a combination of Speckled Malted Milk Balls, Mini Robin Eggs, Pastel Peanut M&Ms, Speckled Jelly Bird Eggs, SweetTarts Jelly Beans, Reese’s Pieces Pastel Eggs, the white chocolate bunny, and even some edible green apple grass. I also got the apothecary jars at WalMart for around $3.00 each.

These are so easy to make that the kids would even enjoy putting these together themselves. I went a little overboard so I’ve got to go get more jars so I can make more gifts or else we’re going to end up with way too much Easter candy left in this house!

~LilSis

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Sponsor a Bunny for Easter!

March 27, 2010

Easter Farm Animal Adoption

It’s tempting to buy a cute little chick, duckling or bunny at Easter.  They grow up though, and then how do you care for them?  Little chickies are adorable, but a full-grown feisty chicken is another story!

How about sponsoring a farm animal instead of buying one that you aren’t prepared to care for long-term?  Farm Sanctuary has a great farm animal adoption program that could be a perfect solution.  Do you have children who have outgrown Easter egg hunts?  Maybe you have a grandchild out of state?  Or perhaps you have a niece or nephew who loves animals?  Maybe you’ve decided this is the year you’ll be more creative at Easter, and you just don’t want to bring a bunch of candy into the house.  What a great idea to sponsor a farm animal in the name of someone special!

All you need to do is go to Farm Sanctuary’s adoption page and choose a duck, bunny or chicken to sponsor for $10-$15 per month, based on a one-year sponsorship.

I’m especially partial to Buttercup!

Buttercup

and Howard!

Howard

You or your gift recipient will receive an adoption certificate with a color photograph of the adopted friend, an adoption card, an invitation to schedule a VIP tour to meet the adopted friend, and other great benefits depending on the animal. If a year is more than you want to commit to, you can also make a one-time gift that will be greatly appreciated.

So if you’re looking for something different to do at Easter this year, here’s a way to do that and help a great cause at the same time!

~BigSis

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Make an Easter Bunny Cake!

March 25, 2010

How many of us remember precious homemade Easter Bunny Cakes from our childhoods?  SisMama has made Bunny Cakes over the years, and they’re always seriously adorable and a big hit with everyone…not just the kids!

This is the one SisMama makes.  It’s the Kraft Easter Bunny Cake.

Kraft Easter Bunny Cake

Kraft's Easter Bunny Cake

If you want to make the super simple version, you just need cake mix, Cool Whip and coconut.  Oh, and decorations like gumdrops, licorice and jelly beans.  But if you have a little more time on your hands and want to fancy it up a bit, use a homemade cake with good homemade frosting.

Betty Crocker also has an Easter Bunny Cake that’s way cute!  Again, use a cake mix if you want to.  Betty recommends a carrot cake mix with her canned frosting.

Easter Bunny Cake Betty Crocker

Betty Crocker's Easter Bunny Cake

I am so in love with this last cake that I can’t stand it!  It does require the purchase of a Wilton Bunny Pan, but take a look at this Easter cuteness!  Wilton calls it their Landing Feet First! Cake.

Wilton Feet First Easter Bunny

Wilton's Feet First Easter Bunny

So pick your favorite, and surprise your family and friends with a cute Easter Bunny Cake this year.  I bet they’ll remember it for years to come!

~BigSis

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Hoppy Easter!

April 12, 2009

In observance of Easter, BigSis and LilSis are taking the day off to spend time with family.  We send our wishes out to you for a wonderful Easter, and will see you back here tomorrow.  Until then, enjoy your Easter dinner, egg hunts, and chocolate bunnies!

Hoppy Easter!

Hoppy Easter!

~BigSis

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