Making homemade easter egg dye is easy and inexpensive. Here's how:

Make your own easter egg dye

Combine 1/2 to 1 Tablespoon of food coloring with 2 tsp. vinegar in a cup that is deep enough for the eggs. Add boiling water to about the half way point. Gently place the eggs into the cups. I use a soup spoon to place my eggs in the cups, to avoid cracking.

The longer your easter eggs are left in the dye, the darker the color shade you will acheive. When you remove the egg from the dye, pat dry with a paper towel and place in a holder.

For fancier easter eggs, try marbling the easter egg dye onto the egg.

For marbled easter eggs, put 1 Tablespoon of oil, 1 Tablespoon of vinegar and 1 Tablespoon of food coloring in a cup with enough boiling water to cover egg. Stir quickly with a spoon and drop in a hard boiled egg. Pull the egg out quickly and pat dry with paper towel.

The rubber band easter egg is another great trick.

Just wrap rubberbands in varying widths around your hard cooked easter eggs, then drop them in your choice of food-coloring dye. When they are a color you like, remove the eggs, pat dry with paper towel and remove rubber bands. The parts of the egg that were covered with the rubber bands will not be colored. After removing the rubber bands, you can leave them as they are, or you can drop the egg into a different color dye. The stripes will now color, but will be a lighter color than the rest of the egg, creating an interesting effect.

Another variation on the rubber band trick is to use candle wax. Drip wax from a lit taper candle onto the egg.After the wax is set, drop the egg into food coloring dye. Remove from the dye and pat dry. You can then scrape the wax off and dip your easter egg into another dye, or just leave the wax on if it's a pretty color.