one of the things i wanted to do this weekend was to dye a pair of jeans. i've been wanting to jump into the colored-jeans trend, but couldn't find a pair that was long enough or in a good color or a good fit, and we had a pair of not-so-favorite jeans that were just begging to be let out of the bottom drawer, so we figured why not??
that was a run-on sentence. i apologize.
we started with a tutorial online... that i found on pinterest. i read it, made sure to remember the tips and tricks and ratios of bleach to water and dye to desired saturation, and decided to give it a go. we started with the jeans in a bucket with water and bleach.
here they are a couple hours later, and then after sitting over night.
we washed the jeans with a load of whites [might as well put the excess bleach to use, right?] and then mixed up the dye with hot water and salt, according to the package directions.
we used two bottles of sunshine orange liquid dye,wanting to get a really nice saturated orange. the last picture up there is just after dipping the jeans in for a second. so fun, right?
my original idea was to dye them purple, but friday morning we went shopping and i found a pair of magenta/purple boyfriend jeans that were long [!!!!] and a really fun color and fit perfectly. on sale. plus an extra 30% off. score! so we had to think of a new color and then change our minds when we got to walmart and they hardly had any of the same colors as online.
we dunked the jeans in the dye, making sure that all the air bubbles were smooshed out and then left them to sit until they soaked up as much wonderful bright orangey-ness as possible.
these shots are after about 20 minutes, an hour and a half, and six hours. [we left the house to do some more shopping!!]
they look so great, don't they?! we were pretty dang excited and happy with ourselves at this point. so we walked over to the end of the driveway, poured out all the dye, and rinsed the jeans a couple times with plain water to get all the excess off before tossing them in the washer.
and that's when we realized our mistake. see, we are very low-maintenance diy-er's. we didn't think that the bleaching process needed to be carefully monitored. bad move. once the bleach was finished sucking out all the color, it continued to suck the very life out of these jeans! the first thing we noticed was all the buttons that tore out of the fly. but we thought it was just from the metal rusting and eating through...
then i flipped the jeans over and kept wringing them out and...
uh oh. that one's a little bit impossible to repair. :(
upon further inspection we realized that the jeans were basically falling apart. i kept wringing them out and each time i noticed more little tears all along the seams and worn-out areas.
so, in conclusion, i wouldn't necessarily call this a pinterest fail... but i would encourage anyone who wants to try dyeing their own jeans to pay very close attention. the second those babies are bleached white take them out!! i don't think leaving them in the dye for a long time damaged them at all... how else are you supposed to get nice, deep, saturated colors? i blame the bleach. 100%. oh, and also our couch-potato approach.
in other news, my mom had some caterpillars living on the basil plant in her kitchen!! we think there were probably eggs on the leaves when she bought it and they just hatched and grew without anyone noticing. [that's how often she uses fresh basil! don't tell her i said that.] there were four total. just sitting there. my brother and i decided that the plant needed to go. [caterpillars are creepy.] the whole thing. plant, soil, pot, bugs. and my jeans. in the outside trash. adios.
overall this has been a fantastic weekend. i've had so much fun spending time with my friends who i never ever get to see, and having an entire conversation with my momma in person instead of divided up between four different phone calls, and shopping at a real mall.
but i do really miss my johnny monster. i've decided that solo vacations are officially banned from here on out. although, as excited as i am to see his face and give him a big smooch, i'm not so excited for the 6am departure time on my plane ticket.
No comments:
Post a Comment