Easter Decorations Throwback — Ruby’s Easter Egg Dye
Every year in spring we do roundups of the best Easter decorations and we’re always amazed at the beautiful Easter eggs. It never fails to spark a throwback memory to the best Easter egg decoration ever.
If you were a kid dying Easter eggs in the ’80s and ’90s, and if you had a crafty mom who didn’t mind a bit of mess, you may recall some vibrant dyes that came in little glass bottles with bunny stoppers.
Dying eggs with these oil-based dyes was a real production. You poured all the dyes into the bowl at once, then had to act quickly, while the colors were swirling, recombining and changing. You slipped each egg into the wire holder, then swirled it through the rainbow waters and watched the sticky oil-based dyes glom onto the egg’s shell. And onto your fingertips. And onto your hands. And onto the sides of the bowl. It was messy! But the end result was a gorgeous stained-glass effect unlike any we’ve ever seen.
Every egg looked completely different, depending on which colors were combining in the bowl at the very moment when that egg hit the water.
When you were finished, you had to let the eggs stand on rack for 24 hours for the dyes to set. And it took about an hour to clean off the dye, scrubbing everything it came into contact with, using vinegar and an abrasive cleanser.
The dyes, manufactured by the Tootsie Toy company, have long been discontinued. But the memory lives on for those of us who used them. And the glass bottles that the dyes came in, with the bunny stoppers, are now collectibles. There’s even a facebook page for fans.
The closest we’ve seen even approach a similar effect is with a much “cleaner and neater” method — shaving cream and food coloring. But, note: unlike Ruby’s, you will have to spray the eggs with clear poly to keep the colors from fading at the merest touch of water. Over at A Thrifty Mom, they are dying Easter eggs using the shaving cream method. The kids are having a blast, it’s an easy clean up and the end result is almost as vibrant and colorful as our beloved Ruby’s Easter Egg Dye.
Do you remember Ruby’s Easter Egg Dye? Tweet us at @BritandCo.
(Photo via A Thrifty Mom)
