Tie-Dying T-Shirts... And Hands

The fog finally lifted last week and we saw the sun. Little C and I took full advantage of the weather and spent a lot of time in the backyard playing. One day, we dug out a tie dying kit we had bought at Michaels a few weeks ago and got to work.

The kit we bought was made by Tulip a few weeks ago. It was a one step Tie Dye Kit. We used a 50% off coupon, so we got it for a pretty good price. They have many different sized kits. They even have one for a tie dye party! We chose one with 5 colours. 

After buying the kit, we headed to Walmart for some cheap t-shirts. We found some great plan white tees on the clearance rack. You don't have to buy new t-shirts thought. I remember tie dying everything I could find when I was a kit - white t-shirts, socks, underwear, anything! 

What I like about this kit is that it's easy. The instructions are easy to follow and there are lots to pictures to help.

Step 1 - Wash your items. You can tie dye dry fabric or wet fabric. I decided to go with the wet method. I think the dye is able to spread inward better, although I'm really not sure.

Step 2 - Tie up your fabric. There were lots of suggestions in the instructions that came with the kit, so I showed C the shirt and he chose a design to try.  This is what our shirts looked like after I had them all tied up with elastics. We tried to do a big bulls-eye, some smaller bulls-eyes, a swirl, a crumpled up ball, and some stripes. The best part of this project is that anything goes! You can't really mess it up... it may not look like the picture, but it will still look okay!

Step 3:  Now, take a deep breath, because it's time to get messy. The kit we bought came with these awesome squirt bottles. The dye was already in the bottles. I just had to fill them with water up to the line, put the cap back on and shake, shake, shake. Easy.

Step 4: start applying the dye. Here is my big piece of advice. Use the gloves. Actually, get yourself a better pair of gloves before you start. The gloves in the kit weren't the best. They didn't fit my hands well, and they definitely didn't fit C's. We started with gloves, but they were soon dropped on the grass. Big mistake. Dye really works. Even on skin. Ugh. (Over a week later, I'm still cleaning dye out of my nailbeds.)

Step 5: Wait. Wrap your clothing up, so the dye can do its job. I put each project in a ziplock bag to make sure that it didn't leak. 

Step 6:  The next day, take each item out and rinse out all the extra dye. There will be a lot. I was surprised, and sure that the shirts would be white when I was done. Luckily, they weren't! It did take a LOT of water to do this. 

 

Step 7:  Dry time!  I would suggest washing again, with items of similar colours. I have a feeling they will run for a couple of washes. 

This was definitely a fun project for outdoors. Grab your coupons, head to Michaels, and then search your closet for white t-shirts for some budget friendly fun!

Killer BBQ Brushes!

Have you heard that wire BBQ brushes are dangerous? I had no idea! Last year, I started hearing about the dangers of using the wire BBQ scrapers. I remember thinking, where did this come from? In my experience, there has always been a wire brush sitting next to all of the barbeques in my memories.  If it was really that bad, why hadn't I heard of this before? Well, apparently, it has been an issue -- to the point that Health Canada is looking into whether they should be pulled from store shelves. (See an article from yesterday, from CBC: Saint John BBQer Swallowed Brush Wire w/ Burger ) The idea of swallowing that gives me the heeby jeebies, so I chucked ours in the trash. 

Of course, then I had to figure out what to use. I was at Costco one day and saw this scraper:

It was a bit pricey, but we decided to give it a try. Luckily it works, and I don't think it will injure me or my family!

I still wondered what other people use, so I had done a little research and found a few ideas online:

1.  Half of an onion - This surprised me, but I could see how it would work!

2.  Wooden Scraper, like the one above - The "Great Scrape" works awesome, but I feel like you could probably make your own, by just using a piece of wood or maybe even a cedar shingle. 

3.  Aluminum Foil - crumple it up, and rub it against the grills using a pair of tongs. Easy peasy! 

4.  Other scrapers - I've seen ones that look like scrubbers you would use when doing dishes

5.  Burn it off! Leave the BBQ on for a bit and burn off any food remnants. Of course, this doesn't always do the trick and can leave burnt bits, so a scraper would still need to be used. No one wants burnt bits on their food! 

Basically, do what you need to, but throw out those metal wire scrapers! No one wants to serve metal at their summer BBQ!