How to Dye Easter Eggs with Rice for a Pretty Speckled Look

Skip the dip-dyed eggs and make these surprisingly mess-free Easter eggs instead. These rice-shaken Easter eggs are made with three materials you probably already have lying around the house. It's also easy enough for the whole family to get involved. Just add food coloring to dry rice, drop in an egg, and gently shake or roll. Dyeing Easter eggs with rice distributes the color around the egg and adds an interesting speckled pattern. And with our easy techniques, you don't even have to get your hands dirty!

Dying Easter eggs with rice is one of our favorite easy kid's Easter projects—just have an adult help with adding the dye. Once you're done dyeing eggs with rice, display the finished eggs as part of a creative spring centerpiece or use them as part of your morning Easter egg hunt.

How to Make Rice Dyed Easter Eggs

Supplies Needed

• Ceramic eggs or hard-boiled eggs
• Plastic cups
• Dry rice
• Food coloring

Step-by-Step Directions

Follow these simple how-to instructions to color eggs with rice. You should be able to use this technique to decorate one dozen rice shake Easter eggs in under an hour.

Step 1: Dye rice

Dying Easter eggs with rice begins with a plastic cup or bag.

Fill the bag or cup with plain, dry rice. We filled our cups about a third to the top; for each egg color, you'll need one cup of rice and one empty cup. When you have several cups of rice prepared, choose color pairings of food coloring or natural dye for your eggs. We used these color pairings: purple and blue, red and yellow, green and yellow.

Drop 10-15 drops of each color directly into the dry rice; place the empty cup over the cup with rice, openings together, and shake the rice until the color is evenly distributed. You can do this by simply holding the cups together, or you can secure the cups together with masking tape before shaking.

Step 2: Shake eggs

When the dye is evenly distributed on the rice, pour the rice into one of the cups and drop in an egg. Place the two cups together like before and shake continuously until the egg is evenly covered in dye. Then, take the cups apart, carefully remove the egg; set out to dry.

That's it—dyeing Easter eggs with rice is that easy! We used ceramic eggs ($16 for 12, Oriental Trading) for this project, but you can also use hard-boiled eggs. If you opt for hard-boiled eggs, shake very gently, and be sure to let the rice Easter eggs dry in the refrigerator to keep them edible.