Cherry Blossom Shoes

So I really like cherry blossoms.  I also have multiple days a week I need to be in closed-toed shoes for proper lab protocol.  So I mixed the two.

I've had this idea for a while, but have never really had the opportunity to get around to doing it until now.  It also helped that I was recently at Target and saw these white canvas shoes by Mossimo for $17.

Blank Canvas

 The label in the shoes said that they were made entirely of man-made materials, but didn't go much into detail about exactly what materials they were.  I decided to use my Rit DyeMore dye instead of just the regular dye since the regular dye is better for natural materials.  If I do another pair, I might try using the regular dye and see how it turns out.

Removed the laces

I used about 3 tablespoons of dye in about a gallon of hot water.  After I wet the shoes in the sink, I submerged them top-down in the dye for about 5 minutes.  I was a little nervous that the boiling water would affect the rubber, but so far, so good.

Submerged in the dye

The color was darker when wet, but the change wasn't as drastic as it usually is when I work with the regular dye.  After I rinsed out the excess dye and let the shoes dry overnight, they dried down to a nice pale blue color.

Immediately after rinsing

In the meantime, I dyed the laces pink to match the pink fabric paint I would be using to paint the blossoms.  I used a tablespoon of Rit Petal Pink dye and a teaspoon of Rit Fuschia in a little under a half gallon of water.  I took a gamble using this since I had no idea which dye the laces would take, but it worked out in the end.

Tea kettles are so convenient for dye.  Also note the red towel on top of the red rug.  I'm well prepared for this one.

I attempted to ombre the shoelaces so they would be light in the center and darker on the ends, but it didn't really work out well.  I guess I didn't have enough dye to really make a difference in the saturation, but I'm not heartbroken over it.

Attempting to ombre

I rinsed the shoelaces out as well, and left them to dry overnight.

Everything fully dry

Now came the fun part.  I pulled up a picture of the cherry blossom bow tie I painted for Casey for reference, then basically did the same thing.  I made everything a little bigger since I had a bigger space to cover.  I used Tulip Soft Matte fabric paint in Chocolate, Crimson Red, and Petal Pink.

Branches and red blossoms down.  Also enjoy the Hansen's Sno Bliz cup cameo.

Sorry I forgot to rotate all my pictures before I uploaded them.

Once the fabric paint dried, I laced the pink laces back in.  All in all, I'm pretty happy with how these turned out, and I can't decide if I can't wait to wear them, or if I don't want to wear them because they look so nice and I don't want to get them dirty.  Until I figure it out, I'm sure I'll be crafting again.

Getting pictures of these was a struggle.  And of course this is the only good one.

Ice Dye - Updated

Some wet, some dried

So I was browsing Pinterest, as always, and was looking for new dye techniques.  I came across a few posts with some really pretty fabrics that were made using a technique called ice dying.  I decided that it would be a really suitable pattern for making bow ties, so I took a trip to my local craft store, ran into one of my aunts and one of my cousins there, got some necessary supplies, and got to work.  I ended up following this tutorial.

Just pretend like I rotated it.

This is my first time working with soda ash, so once I see how this turns out, I might consider investing in more from here on out.  I just wanted to use the normal storage tubs I always use, so I found this rubber basket thing that I decided to cut the bottom out of and I figured I would use that as a rack on top of the tub.

A long 20 minutes later...

After the fabric soaked in the soda ash, I dumped out the water and used the same tub.  I ultimately decided on scarlet, purple, and royal blue dye.  The tutorial said to use plastic spoons, but I couldn't find any since Mom rearranged the pantry, so I just used these little bathroom cups.

Clockwise from top: royal blue, scarlet, purple.

A quick trip to the kitchen for ice later, I was ready to start the fun part.

The setup

In retrospect, I probably didn't need to cut the basket apart, but it makes potential adaptation to a larger container easier.

About 5 minutes in

It's hard to believe, but somewhere under that ice that looks like charcoal is a piece of fabric about to have a lot of color thrust upon it.

I thought the melting ice looked really cool. 

Well, I have no idea how this is going to turn out.  I guess we'll find out in about 24 hours.

UPDATE

This is a second batch.

I ended up rinsing the first piece of fabric after about 16 hours because I panicked when I looked at it and saw a solid black lump.  I was worried that I used way too much dye and that it would be so dark that all the colors would blend together into some form of dark mass.  Once I washed it and let it air dry, I was pleasantly surprised.

The bottom left one is fully dry.

In the picture, the light purple one in the bottom left corner is the first piece I did.  The other three are still wet from being washed, so I'm looking forward to see how they look once they're dry.  I did let those sit for about 24 hours though, so the color had a little more time to saturate the fabric.  They may turn out a little lighter than what I would like, since I used about half the amount of dye in these than I did for the first one.  I look at them, and they remind me a lot of watercolor paintings.  I really like how this turned out, and will definitely be using this technique again in the future.

Cherry Blossom Bow Ties

For those of you who don't know, my favorite crafty pastime is making bow ties.  I've made so many different ones, and I've learned so many different dying techniques in the process.  I've learned how to dip dye, ombré, and tie dye.

A watermelon I'm quite fond of.

Tie dyed Mardi Gras puppy bow tie

I was thinking of things that I haven't tried yet, and I realized I haven't done much in the way of painting.  Inspired by the impending springtime, I thought I'd try my hand at painting some cherry blossoms.

I soaked a solid white tie in water to help the dye absorb better.

The first thing to do was to prepare a background.  I figured a nice light blue for the sky would be a good effect.  I ombréd the blue the same way I usually do.  First, I added a little bit of water to my little plastic tub and got a solid white bow tie nice and soaked.  Then, I took the tie out, and added a kettle full of boiling hot water.  I eyeballed roughly a half cup of salt, which nicely dissolved immediately.  I ended up adding 3 teaspoons of Aquamarine Rit Dye.

Note the vinyl gloves.  Learn from your mistakes, kids.  Especially when you have to keep your nails painted for four solid months because you accidentally dyed them purple while making tights.

I don't usually worry about the neck strap too much when I dye because it ends up being hidden under the shirt collar anyway.  I accidentally got some drops of concentrated dye on the tie, so I just decided that would be the darker side.  I didn't let the dye sit too long, since I wanted a nice light blue.  The color always turns out a little bit lighter once it dries, so I pulled it out when it was just slightly darker than what I wanted.

Fresh out the dye bath.

After rinsing in my bathroom sink, the dorm gods smiled down upon me and graced me with an available washing machine.  I live in a building made to house 150+ people, and there are only 4 washers.  One of them is currently broken.  This building was not planned particularly well.

Freshly washed, hanging out to dry.

Once it dried, it ended up fading to a beautiful light blue color.  It's always tricky figuring out exactly how long to leave the dye to set, especially when it dries so drastically different from the wet color.  I guess I just got lucky this time.

Perfect sky background color.

Next came the actual painting.  I have never done this before, so I figured a few practice branches and flowers on a test scrap of fabric would probably be a good idea.  Once I painted, I realized that since I was using so little paint on the fabric itself, I didn't worry about it bleeding through.  Even if it did, I could cover it up with an identical stroke on either side.

I decided on larger branches with dots instead of individual petals.

The best part about nature is that it rarely follows a straight line.  As a result, I could pretty much take the branches in any direction I wanted.

Branches that look like veins ready for petals.

On the test strip, I realized I like the look of red layered under pink petals, so I scattered dots along the branches in red first, then pink.  I added a few blowing in the wind, as well.

Ready for pink.

I'm not going for anything too terribly realistic, so there are a lot of petals floating around in space.  At first, I was reluctant to add the pink, since the red looked so good on its own.  Once I did though, I was quite pleased with the result.

The final product.

Hopefully within the next few days, the rain will subside enough to go outside and, with my lovely model Casey, take a few pictures in the sunlight so the colors will show up better.  He doesn't know about this yet, so that'll be fun.  It doesn't rain often in Florida, but when it does, it rains nonstop for 4 days.  At least it hasn't been colder than 61 degrees this week.

Check back eventually for updates with better pictures!  I'm not sure why I was so shaky this time around.

Ombre Tights

Being involved in a musical takes up a lot of time.  Especially serving as a member of the cast and being on production staff, most of my time in the past four weeks was dedicated to doing various things.  Whether I was practicing my songs, staging choreography, or even just driving people from place to place, the show dominated my life.  Now that it's over, I'm not entirely sure what I should do.

Let's start with dying some tights.

Hello World's Most Flattering Camera Angle

I saw a couple pictures and tutorials about dip-dying tights, and with my love of all things dye and unwillingness to shell out $40 for a pair of ombre tights, I had to give it a shot.

I don't have fancy backgrounds.  Just my door.

I made the blue ones, loved them, and decided to try my hands at a black and red pair, similar to these.  I figured this would be a cool thing to post, so I went ahead and documented how I did it.

Every tutorial needs a shot of materials.

The tights themselves were these in ivory from JCPenny.  They were on sale for $10 a pair, so I figured why not?  I got them in an XL since the store was out of larges, but they ended up a little more sheer than I anticipated, so I'm glad I got the XL.  However, the most important factor of choosing these was the fabric blend.  These particular ones are 86% nylon and 14% spandex.  For those of you who may not know, Rit dye doesn't work on certain types of fibers.  Spandex is one of them.  The website says that as long as 60% of the blend is one that can be dyed, the color will take.  Since the ratio of nylon to spandex was so high, I ended up with a really good color saturation.

I use plastic storage bins whenever I'm dying relatively small amounts of cloth.  They're pretty cheap, and that way I don't have to worry about staining any good bowls or tubs or pots and the like.  I have two one-quart mason jars that I use to collect hot water and to do the actual mixing in.  I like to use a chopstick for stirring because they're cheap and a good length for the jars.  For measuring, I commandeered my mother's measuring spoons.  It's okay, I got her new ones.  After laying down a towel that I don't particularly care if it gets discolored, I was ready to go to town.

This is my favorite part.

The first thing I did was mix the dye.  I just used hot tap water straight from the faucet.  I live in a dorm, so it's probably not as hot as it could be, but I think it worked just fine.  Next, I mixed the colors.  In each jar, I put 4 teaspoons of wine, and two teaspoons of tangerine.  The dye colors, not actual wine and fruit.  When I did a test strip, the color was a little more purple than I wanted, so I added a teaspoon of scarlet and that gave me a nice red color.

Use a chopstick if you don't want to get your hands dirty.

After I poured the dye into the tub, it was time to submerge the tights.  Last night when I did the blue, I ended up sort of easing some space into each leg because the dye wasn't spreading evenly, but I didn't have a problem with it this time around.

The blue finally came off from last night.  Just in time to be replaced by red.

I really wanted a deep blood red color, so I let the tights sit in the red dye for about 10 minutes.  Then I rinsed the tights and the tub with cold water in the shower.  Looking at the red droplets all over the shower, I was really happy no surprise room inspections happened.

Note the red hand on the left corner.  The colors were actually much darker than they appear here.

Next, I mixed the black dye.  I put two tablespoons of black dye into each jar, mixed, then poured it in the tub.  Then comes the hard part.  I have a little bit of experience with dip-dying, since I used a lot of that in making bow ties over the summer.  I started it the same way I always do by doing one really quick dip of the entire thing (starting at the legs) into the dye.  The dye was a lot more pigmented than I thought and it started out a lot darker than I thought.  Looking back, it probably would have been better to start farther down since the color did diffuse upward a little bit and soften.  I moved the tights up about 2 inches, then let the dye sit for 5 minutes.  I moved the tights up about another 4 inches and let it sit for 5 more minutes.  As I got closer to the bottom, I started letting the dye sit for about 10 minutes to really get a rich black color.

Note the dye splashed all over the place.  I accidentally moved the tub too fast.  There's a physics problem in there somewhere.  We're learning fluid mechanics this week, so I'll let you know when we get to it.

When I finally finished, I rinsed everything out in the shower again, went downstairs, and threw them in the wash with a towel because I feel weird washing any one article of clothing by itself.  I threw in some underwear when I washed the blue ones last night.  I took a gamble because I noticed that the underwear was made of fabric that Rit couldn't dye, so I wasn't too worried about the color bleeding.  Lucky for me, that logic seemed to work and I don't have any blue undies that aren't supposed to be blue.

Freshly rinsed

Now I just have to wait for them to dry to see how they turned out.

Fresh out of the washer.

They ended up a little more purple than I anticipated, but since I couldn't decide between red and black and different shades of purple earlier, I'm not too upset.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how they look once they've dried!