It's the Age of Aquarius

Welcome to another installment of Holly's Arts and Crafts Corner! I decided to be crafty one morning with the girls and create tie-dye sheets to use on the floor for Ella's birthday party (so the kids aren't eating ice cream sundaes on our carpet) and to use in the future as tablecloths or picnic blankets.

I hadn't tie-dyed since I was about 14 or 15 and I didn't remember how you sort of had to be patient with it. So while I had good intentions for this to be a project for me to do with the girls, it ended up more of a project just for me. But they had fun watching me and seeing the progress with the different colors. I also made some t-shirts for them. :-)

Things you need:
Rit dye--variety of colors
buckets (I bought these colorful buckets for $1 each at the Dollar Store)
hot water
disposable rubber gloves
rubber bands
t-shirts or other material to dye

I put the rubber bands on everything the previous night to make things move along more quickly. The next morning, I just followed the directions on the dye to create the dye baths. Brought them outside and put the T-shirt and sheets in to set. I used multiple colors at once to make the process shorter. Rinsed in water when all the colors were finished. Then washed separately in the washer.

The girls were excited about their t-shirts, especially Ella. She has worn it several times and kept saying, "Mommy made this for me." :-)


From this....

To this....

Ella helps me take the rubber bands off. :-)


The finished products! I was pretty excited by how they turned out. When I washed them, the white didn't stand out as much. The dye ran quite a bit. So they don't look quite as cool anymore as they do here. But I'm still pretty pleased with how they turned out.