Dadaistic Easter egg dyeing

You need:

• 7 - 8 minutes boiled eggs best from free-range chickens, whose shell is thicker and stronger and therefore more suitable for colouring
• Cord and nylon stockings and adhesive letters
• Vinegar water
• Different colours as brew
• Oil and kitchen paper
• Newspaper

Preparation of dyeing liquid
Blue eggs, basic recipe:
Finely chop 1½ kg of red cabbage, bring 1½ litres of water to the boil in a large pot, simmer for about 25 minutes. Sieve the brew into a pot, add 1 tbsp. white wine vinegar.
Place hard-boiled eggs in the brew, after about 1 hour the eggs start to take on colour.

Purple eggs, basic recipe:
Place hard-boiled eggs in blueberry juice. In contrast to red cabbage brew, blueberry juice colours very quickly. Already after a few minutes lighter purple tones are reached, after about 30 minutes darker ones.
Lift the eggs out of the juice and carefully pat them dry with household paper; the purple colour is still very sensitive when wet, so let them dry well.

Yellow eggs, basic recipe:
Boil 1 teaspoon turmeric in ½ litres of water.
Place the boiled eggs in the brew afterwards and let them steep for up to an hour, the longer the tinting time, the darker the yellow tones become.

Designing Dadaist words
What is Dada, anyway?
During the First World War many people fled from war-torn countries to neutral Switzerland. Young artists were among them, and some of these artists joined forces in Zurich. They have extraordinary ideas and carry out unexpected actions and programmes. In 1916 they christened their group and what this group does, DADA. DADA, also "Dadaism", is usually a bit crazy, the artwork of Dadaists is full of humor, irony and sometimes nonsense. They stick to little or no rules and try out new things. A very well-known Dadaist is German artist Hannah Höch. She has often used the technique of collage, that is, she has cut out different elements from different pictures and combined them in new ways. That also works great with letters.

Now try for yourself if you can make Dadaist word creations. We have prepared inspirations for you, you will find them on the next picture. If you have designed as many words as eggs, you can put them on the table with letters cut out of a newspaper.

Preparing eggs for the colouring broth
Stick your Dada word creations with the sticky letters on the eggs.
Then put the nylon stockings over the eggs and tie them at both ends with a string so that the nylon stockings fit tightly.

Dyeing eggs
Place the eggs in the different colored liquids as described in the instructions above.
Check the intensity of the colour after 30 minutes.
You can control the power of the colours with the duration of the dyeing time and decide for yourself which shade of colour you want for your Dada eggs.

Coloured Dada eggs
When the eggs are completely coloured, take them out of the colouring liquid and let them drip off on a kitchen roll.
Then free the dyed eggs from the stockings.
When the eggs are dry, remove the adhesive letters very carefully.
As a last step you can rub the eggs with cooking oil to give them a great shine.

Eat or hide Dada eggs
It' s up to you whether you keep the eggs for yourself or hide them for your family at Easter
If you want, you can tell them about Dada.
If you eat the Dada eggs, I'm sure you can all speak Dada afterwards.