How to: tie-dye paper!

As I’ve mentioned, Miss B is hosting a tie-dye themed 1st Birthday party for herself in a couple of weeks. I wanted to do a full party and all, but certainly had to do it all on a wee, tiny budget (like everything else in my life!). I got a lot of ideas from this blog post after I’d come up with this genius idea (it’s SOOO “us”), and one of the great ones was how to tie-dye paper. Here’s the how-to…and it really works and is pretty cool!

 

Ingredients:

1 pkg perforated post cards/index cards (or, in this case, invitations! i pre-printed mine ‘cause i wasn’t sure if i should dye before or after printing…dying after worked GREAT, which is the easy way)

1 can foam shaving cream ($1 at Dollar Tree)

1 box liquid food coloring (of course, already in spice/baking cabinet!)

1 cookie tray

1 rubber spatula

newspapers or similar floor/table covering for messes

 

 

Step 1: Spray enough cream into pan so the entire bottom is covered

Step 2: choose colors and place a few random drops of food coloring on to tray (i started with 3 colors at once and it didn’t look as nice as just one color alone…my opinion)

Step 3: Using rubber spatula, smear coloring into cream to make swirly designs

Step 4: Press paper face down onto cream, flattening as much as possible

Step 5: pull back paper and set onto newspapers

Step 6: Using rubber spatula, scrape remaining cream off paper and place back into tray for next piece of paper (watch the MAGIC!)

Step 7: Hold up your finished product! Voila! (the how-to I read mentioned ironing the paper through a dish towel to prevent wrinkles…I tried that and it didn’t work well. I preferred just stacking the dried paper - takes about 5 minutes to dry - and flattening overnight under some heavy books)

Here’s another color I used for some of the invites. After its all done, you just have to separate the individual cards and place them in an envelope!

I didn’t show a pic of the “final” product, but just so you know…I cut the cards so they looked like little t-shirts with the information on the “front” of the shirt. So cute!

Since I already had some of the materials (coloring, envelopes, stamps), all in all I spent about $7 on everything including mailing. A steal AND they’re pretty, ta boot!