Hi friends! How are you? I’m alright. Craving the beach. I’m hoping by the time this post goes live I’ll have found my way to the beach. In the meantime, I’ve got a really easy and fun DIY. We got the family together for a brunch not too long ago. It’s been too hot in Florida lately, like waaaaaay too hot. Luckily my dads house provides breeze, a pool, and shade for our time there. I asked all the little girls if they wanted to do a ice-dye project, of course I heard “yes’ and yay’s!” all around.  I wasn’t sure how it would go since they are a bit young, but we had a great time– and they created some of the cutest shirts, almost completely by themselves. So yeah, here is a fun and easy ice dye project with Rit Dye that anyone can do!

You’ll need:

• ice (lots of it! Well, the bigger the fabric, the more ice you need) For this project, different ice sizes will equal different dye patterns on your fabric! Would be fun to try similar techniques with different ice shapes to see what happens 🙂
• Rit Dye powdered dye. The liquid dye makes a lot of projects easier — but the key here is the powedered dye!*
• grates or some sort of object to hold up your fabric and allow water to flow through. We used oven grates.
• buckets or large storage bins. But really anything will work– pots, pans, whatever– you just need something to prop up your grates. And if you’re inside, something to preferable catch all your dye water. Pro tip: probably best to do this outside. Rit Dye is all natural and non toxic, so you don’t have to worry about the dye though!
• fabric! (duh) we used thrifted + new organic t-shirts. You can dye curtains, bedding, socks, underwear, backpacks, shoes, whatever! We love taking old stained items and up-cycling them with Rit Dye— so great being able to give old things new life 🙂 Cotton is preferred. All purpose Rit Dye will not work on 100% polyester. You want to keep your shirts mostly cotton, with a max percentage of 35% polyester 🙂  And it’s recommended to pre-wash the fabric.

*You can choose as many colors as you’d like– but for this project I’d recommend sticking to two– MAYBE three max. The colors are going to blend a lot and you don’t want end up with a brown color here. Even one color can be really fun. Also please keep in mind that less is more for this project! It’s super easy to get carried away and sprinkle a lot of dye on your fabric. But the colors might blend too much if you do this. Don’t be afraid to leave a lot of white space when sprinkling dye 🙂

Rit Dye is available at A.C. Moore stores all along the east coast. Click HERE to find a store near you!

How to:

• wet your fabrics (I just stuck all the shifts in a bucket of water to soak while I prepped)
• line up your bucket(s) and place your grates on top.
• squish up, roll up, scrunch up (whatever!) your fabric into a pile on top of the grates.
• cover your fabric with as much ice as you can. This will be easier with smaller sized grates by the way.
• sprinkle your powder dye on top! It’s recommended that you wear gloves, but we skipped that step (oops). But if you’re careful enough, you won’t end up dyed another color.
• and that’s it! Well, for a while. Let all your ice melt completely. If you’re somewhere hot, this is a great opportunity to make a smoothie or jump in the pool and lounge for a bit.
• once all your ice is melted you want to rinse your fabric totally and completely until no more dye runs out of the fabric.
• then dry in the sun, dryer, or microwave until fully dry. Drying the fabric at the end will ensure your color sets. And voila! Fun and easy water color magic ice dye!

Our serious faces.

Trudy was the only one who went for a yellow, the rest of us all stuck in the blue and purple range. Her’s may have come out the best, haha. I mean, I love my shirt too, but it was nice to see her’s have that pop 🙂

Rinse rinse rinse.

Tie tie tie. Dry dry dry. That high heat sunshine will make the color last longer and be brighter!

So fun, right?

Ice dye dance party. It’s funny because they all really do wear tie dye a lot– so it was so fun to have them make their own tie dye shirts 🙂

Messy hair, ice dye, sunshine, and peace signs. Sounds about right, right? The end of summer is coming faster than we can imagine— so why not do a quick and so easy (and cheap too!) end of summer project with your friends or kids? This would be super cute for a birthday party, bachelorette party, or maybe a 60’s themed pool party too!

GIVEAWAY

Enter to win a $100 A.C. Moore gift card to jumpstart your dyeing projects this summer! Just follow Rit Dye & A.C. Moore on Instagram and comment on this post about what you would upcycle!

ps. If you’re interested you can check out my other Rit Dye tie dye DIY HERE. (Say that 10 times fast, haha!)

*this post was sponsored by Rit Dye + AC Moore. Rit dye is available at A.C. Moore stores all along the east coast.