DIY Colored Jeans

Did you know that you can make your own colored jeans?? yep, DIY!  Colored jeans are trendy right now, but I'm not sold on the trend, so I for sure didn't want to spend a lot of money on them.  So I decided to make my own....and I made a tutorial in case you want to do the same, including my tips on using dye....

First up, start with a light pair of jeans.  I, of course, recently got rid of all my light jeans, thinking they were way out of style.  So of course I had to go buy some for a few dollars from a thrift store - ah, the cycle of clothes continues.  Here they are:

I wonder if it would work to take dark jeans and bleach them lighter.  Someone try that and let me know :)
You want light jeans so the color shows up better.

Now, on to the dying - I used liquid Rit dye, in "tangerine".  I wanted a vivid color so I used the whole bottle.  I got it at Michael's with my 40% off coupon.

I have several clothes-dying tips for you:

---PREwet everything!  That will help the dye distribute evening.   So I got the jeans and the shirt completely saturated - no dry spots at all - you can see they're wet in the above picture.

---Use HOT water.  I think this helps lock in the color.

---You can use a bucket, or your washing machine - I just plugged up my kitchen sink and used that.  I filled it with enough water to comfortably cover everything I was dying.

---While you've got a sink full of dye, consider anything else you might want to chuck in - I always feel like I'm wasting good dye when I'm done, so use it to it's full potential - that's why I threw in the tshirt.

---Read the directions - you're supposed to add salt.  I just poured some in, guestimating instead of precise measuring.

---Stir the salt til it dissolves.  Then pour in the dye and stir it until it looks evenly mixed.

---When you add your clothes, they'll get air bubbles in them and want to float to the top.  You don't want that - everything needs to be submerged, so push them down and push out the air bubbles.

---You might want to use a glove for that step I just mentioned.  Or not.

---I let it soak about 20 minutes - about halfway through I stirred up all the clothes and pushed them down again just to make sure they were evenly getting dye.

--And voila - perfectly dyed!!  No splotches or anything - I was super pleased!

The jeans took the color great too!

I used that orange shirt to make the cowl you see me wearing - I'll have that tutorial up later today....