You will need
Cold water - 2 cups for every 1 cup of vegetables
Vegetables to create your chosen colours (see below)
Saucepan
Sieve
A different bowl for each colour
- Put the cold water in a saucepan along with your chopped veg. Cover with the lid and bring to the boil.
- Once boiling, remove the lid and turn off the heat. Let the mixture infuse for about 10 mins.
- Strain the liquid into a bowl and allow to cool.
Colours:
Orange: onion skins
Purple: red cabbage
Red: beetroot - cooked
Yellow: turmeric (you will only need a thumb sized piece of fresh turmeric for every two cups of water or you can use a teaspoon of ground turmeric instead)
Blue: add ½ tsp baking powder to the purple dye and watch it turn blue.
Pink: add the juice of ½ lemon to the purple dye and it will turn a reddish-pink.
Green: combine your blue and yellow dyes.
Orange: combine your red and yellow dyes.
You could also try experimenting with different plants, fruit or veggies that you have in your garden and see what sort of colours you can create.
Once your dyes have cooled you can have great fun.
- Boil some eggs in the dyes and add a bit of colour to your breakfast.
- Paint a picture on a T-shirt and iron or tumble dry to fix.
- Tye-dye a t-shirt.
- Dyes are a bit like watercolour paints, so you could also create some great artwork.
