Tie-Dye!

While cleaning some boxes in the bedroom, we found a kit that we got from the homies over at Tie Dye Manila. We never quite got  to playing with the kit, so this was our shot! Here’s some photos of the work in progress. The kit made this the simplest tie-dye project I’ve ever done. It’s simple to use and the kids loved the process too. I had never used the squeeze bottles (included in the kit), opting to dip-dye my tie-dye projects in the past. The bottles were very helpful and economical. You don’t waste dye that you don’t need.

A good idea for any tie-dye project is to line up several projects to do in the same session. Assign which color combinations and patters you’ll use on each item so that they don’t all come off looking the same. We used a mix of items from Nike and Uniqlo, plus some Gildan-based shirts like the Billy shirt from the Storm Tattoo friends. I managed to get a bit of video, so when the shirts are fully washed, dried, and ironed, I’ll shoot a video for YouTube to show the entire process and finished items that I dyed.

DIY is always kinda on my mind, and this project has kind of scratched that itch. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I’ve been trying to figure out a method for customizing my NIke Air Vapormax Flyknit. I’ve been looking it up on You Tube and apparently, the only way people have been able to customize or modify the Flyknit material has been by using dye. That makes sense because they are essentially fabric, but it results in a flat,single color design.

Of course, painting directly on flyknit will likely result in the textile becoming undesirably stiff and will lead to cracking. But that’s because of the paint particles bonding to each other instead of to the threads. So with that in mind, I have a theory: What if you slowly misted on acrylic paint using a spray can? You’d give 15-20 minutes in between sprays and this would potentially keep the droplets of paint from bonding to one another. You could use a masking technique to get a pattern on there too, similar to the Acronym Vapormax. Just a thought.  If I had a good spray can on hand, I’d try it.