If You Haven't Been Using Baking Soda To Dye Easter Eggs, You're Missing Out on the Fizzy Fun

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Dyeing Easter eggs is no longer confined to the humble cups of dye we used to know and still love, you silly bunny. Now there is a whole art form dedicated to the craft that makes an appearance come springtime each year. Easter eggs tie-dyed using strands of silk, speckled using rice, marbled using Cool Whip or nail polish, and even turned into a china pattern using watercolors.

The newest Easter egg dyeing trend we've nailed down: fizzy eggs, also known as baking soda eggs, and most whimsically known as volcano eggs. After giving this technique a test drive—er, test dye—we can say it lives up to the hype, getting points when it comes to both being a fun activity to do with kids and resulting in colorful Easter egg designs you won't see anywhere else.

Here's how to dye Easter eggs using baking soda at home:

Mix baking soda, water, and food dye in a small container until it becomes a paste or very thick liquid. We tested with four different colors: red, blue, green, and yellow. Use around 1/4 cup of baking soda, 1 1/2 tablespoons of water, and three to four drops of food coloring dye per cup. (Add a tiny bit more water if too thick to mix.)

Once all of your mixtures are ready, lay one of your boiled eggs flat inside a small container. Start applying the colored dye pastes onto the egg in small areas. We used paint brushes, but you can also use plastic utensils. There doesn't need to be any rhyme or reason to where you're applying the mixtures, and we generally just made sure the entire exposed white space was covered in a kaleidoscope of different dye pastes. Don't worry about the bottom part of the egg; it won't get left behind. (All part of the fun!)

Once you're finished applying the colored pastes, you can add extra drops of food coloring dye straight onto the egg, as many or few as you'd like. This is where personal experimentation comes into play. (The eggs with the most added drops of food dye will be brighter in color, and we ended up loving a mix of both types.) Let egg sit for 30 seconds.

Now for the fizzy part! Pour a tablespoon of vinegar over the egg and watch it fizz up. Make sure the fizz coats the whole egg, at least for a couple seconds. Dip the egg into a cup of water to wash off excess dye and baking soda paste—and presto! Repeat with remaining eggs.

Depending on how you applied the dye pastes, eggs will look tie-dyed, swirled, or even marbled, but the process is so fun that you're not even concerned about the looks. Luckily you don't need to worry—these eggs are eye-catchers.

Optional step: About an hour before dyeing the eggs, use clear craft glue to create a design on the bare boiled eggs. We favored random squiggles and lines, for example. Let dry before dyeing. When you're dyeing the eggs later, the portions covered in glue will catch dye paste and food coloring drops more brilliantly, which creates an even more noticeable effect afterwards.

Additional tip: Instead of using separate cups for the different dye pastes and all of the eggs, we purchased a cheap muffin tin to use as a makeshift holder for everything at once. We placed the eggs flat on their sides inside the muffin cups, which happened to be the perfect depth for pouring the vinegar, as long as you don't do more than one tablespoon. (Otherwise the fizz will overflow!) We also mixed all of the colored dye pastes in the individual muffin cups on one side.

To reiterate, here's what you need: