A few weeks back, we were doing a little shopping and I asked my son if he wanted to pick out a new shirt for back to school. He looked at me and gave me a huge sigh. For the life of me I didn’t I couldn’t understand his frustration until he said “Mommy, do I HAVE to buy a new shirt for back to school? Can’t I got back to school as plain old me?” My heart melted. If he doesn’t want to fuss and muss with back to school wear, so be it.
About a week later, we were discussing crafts and things we wanted to do and he talked about making a tie-dye shirt. He had made one at camp earlier in the summer but the shirt was already a bit small on him. (We’ve had a 1 1/2 inch growth spurt since July.) It sounded like a fun idea and so I headed off to our local Michael’s to pick up supplies. Luckily for me, the day I went, the shirts were on sale and there were 2 coupons available for me to use on my purchase. My purchase ended up costing me less than half the regular retail price.
My son was thrilled when he came home and saw our impending craft. He immediately decided this was going to be the shirt he wore to back to school. There were kits with 5 and 10 different colors but I settled for one with 3 for our first attempt. Next time, I would love to try more colors.
I made sure we wore old clothes that would be okay if they got stained and made sure the floor was well covered with plastic to ensure the mess factor was kept to a minimum. The instructions were really easy to follow and before you knew it, our shirts were dyed. They recommend letting the colors cure for 6-8 hours. We ended up leaving ours overnight. Mr. Impatient, however, couldn’t wait to see the end product.
I swear we were only up for 10 minutes the next morning, when my son asked if we could see our shirts. I had to rinse the excess color from them and then put them thru the wash but at least we got a sneak peak before I had to throw them in the dryer. They turned out amazing!! Definitely not one of my epic Pinterest fails that I have endured before.
We each made one for ourselves and then we used the excess magenta dye and the extra shirt to make a shirt for my son to wear when they have Pink Shirt Day for anti-bullying later on this school year. I ended up wearing mine that day to a friends bbq and got a ton of compliments. And of course my son, wore his to back to school. He LOVED it.
It was definitely a fun, inexpensive and easy craft to do with my son. I am pretty sure we will be adding more of these to our wardrobes.
My son and I love to do all kinds of crafts however, after a few Pinterest fails, I became a little disenchanted. With winter approaching, I was thinking I would need to start finding some new craft ideas when going outside wasn’t a great option. I was kind of dreading it to be honest. This has given me new motivation to find some new fun crafts.
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