Category: DIY

Craft Review: Tie Dye with Toilet Cleaner

Source of toilet cleaner photo: Amazon.com

Earlier this month, I shared our experiences with a Tie Dye Kit (spoiler, we loved it and you can find the post here) and then I started thinking about other ways to personalize our clothing. Tie dye and bleach dyed clothes are super popular right now, so I figured I’d try my hand at bleach dying. The good news is that all you need is a dark colored shirt and bleach!

The bad news is that I didn’t have any bleach in my house… so I used the next best thing. Toilet cleaner.

Yup, I dyed my shirts with cleaner for our toilets. It was FREE, super easy and fun and you should try it too!

All you need is a shirt or two, some rubber bands, and toilet cleaner. You wet the shirt the same as you would for tie dying, wrap it up… once again the same as you would for tie dying. And then add some toilet cleaner!

Once I had the shirts saturated with the toilet cleaner, I’d set my watch for 15 minutes and check back. My orange shirt lightened up pretty quickly, but when I went to do it a second time with a black shirt I had to wait 30 minute or so for a real difference. I washed the shirts out as much as possible in my laundry sink and then threw them in the laundry for a wash and dry. I love how they turned out!

My orange shirt now has kind of a cloud, creamsicle look to it. It gave the shirt a little extra interest.

What was formerly a plain black shirt is now one of my favorite tops to wear. The black gave way to a pinkish-purplish color, so it’s like a more subtle tie dye pattern. It just looks so cool with a pair of jeans or shorts and it totally gave an unworn shirt new life!

Have you tried bleach dying at home? Did you use actual bleach or try toilet cleaner like I did?

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DIY: Upholstering a Free Bench

I could have also named this post, “A Temporary Fix” because while this DIY is fine in the “how to” upholster something, the final product was just kind of… eh. Anyways, I was bored on Saturday so I threw this project together. I had picked up an old free bench months ago when Lindsey and I were doing some antiquing. We ripped the old and gross fabric off of it and threw it in the back of my car.

Pretty much immediately, I regretted it. So it lived in my garage for months and I was thinking about putting it out for the garbage truck to pick up.

I didn’t need the bench and it was in pretty yucky condition with bits of old fluff stuck to it. However, as I mentioned. I was bored. So, I grabbed an old floor scraper and scraped off the old fluff.

Then, I cut some foam down to the same size as the top of the bench.

I threw some of my velvet upholstery options on the floor from my sewing bin (I picked these up probably 20+ years ago when I was out hitting yard sales with a friend):

I picked the green, so I stuck it on top the bench and foam and got out my handy staple gun…

And BAM, I have a new footrest for my hanging chair.

As I mentioned, I don’t love it. In fact, I’m not really loving my sunroom at all right now. After making it absolutely perfect last spring (you can see it here), in the fall I stole my white sunroom couch and randomly decided to redecorate the den (here’s that post). And the problem is, I LOVE my new den. Which means I need to run out and buy another couch and ottoman for my sunroom. But, #quarentine. So, I decided to make do with that I had around my house.

Once life goes back to normal(ish), we will have to take a trip to Ikea and grab another $399 slipcovered EKTORP couch. Same goes for Homegoods – once they open, I can grab a replacement ottoman. However, for now we are still hunkered down so this bench will work. And then, I’ll add it to my donation pile so someone else can thrift and enjoy it!

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Craft Review: Tie Dye Kit

It’s product review time again and this time we are taking a look at Tie Dye Kit I ordered off Amazon. I was hoping Jack would like it… but I underestimated his reaction because he absolutely LOVED this kit and has been wearing his tie dye shirts non-stop since we made them.

This is the exact kit we bought off Amazon: Tulip One-Step 5 Color Tie-Dye Kit for $19.99

The kit includes:

  • 5 squeeze bottles pre-filled with dye powder (yellow, red, purple, blue and green)
  • 5 refill packets of dye powder (yellow, red, purple, blue and green)
  • Gloves
  • Rubber bands
  • Instructions on how to do a variety of dye styles

I also ordered this set of 5 Hanes Boy’s T-shirts to dye for $7.50.

We filled up the 5 bottles of powdered dye with water and they lasted us through dying 6 shirts, with plenty left to probably do at least 4 more shirts. AND we still have all the refill dye powder packs left, so this kit certainly gave us some bang for our buck.

Jack decided to do a variety of tie dying styles – one with stripes, one crumpled, one in your classic starburst pattern, etc. In order to keep the colors contained and not all over my house, we dyed the shirts in the laundry tub. After each shirt was finished, I put it in a plastic grocery bag and stuck it out of the way until the next morning.

I washed each shirt out by hand in the laundry tub to get most of the extra color out and then did a load of laundry. Oh and in addition to Jack’s 5 shirts, I also threw in an off-white shirt of my own that needed a little extra color. And here’s what we ended up with:

We had SO MUCH FUN with this kit. Since we kept it all in the laundry sink, we didn’t make much of a mess. The shirts all turned out so fantastic and Jack loves that he made them himself.

I would highly recommend this kit for a fun quarantine activity. Or just a fun summer activity with your kid(s) or… even by yourself because tie dye is apparently super fashionable again!

Disclaimer: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. This means that clicking on a link may help me earn a small commission at no cost to you.

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