Faux Pas Corrected

Here is the corrected ladies' top that was featured in Jamaican Tie-Dye Gone Awry.

After the fiasco trying the traditional Jamaican tie-dye, my husband and I had to come up with a new idea. We were stuck with a bunch of children's sets, men's tanks, and men's shirts that were not fit to be displayed on our web site. We realized that however hideous the clothing had become, we were lucky that at least the colors were fairly light. We ended up re-designing these shirts as if they were blanks. The result was that areas that would normally have been white in a finished design had a pale tan hue. We were able to save the projects with a little extra time and creativity. The main lesson here is that no matter how much you screw up a project, there is always some way to fix it. The results may not be what you expected, but sometimes they can come out even better.

-Donna

Jamaican Tie-dye Gone Awry

I was telling someone a few weeks ago about my tie-dye business. I don't remember who it was, but it had to be a parent of a young child, because they said to me, "Oh, I saw that segment on Sesame Street. It looked like fun." Now, having a one year old, I knew exactly what they were talking about. I have seen this segment several times myself.

For those of you who do not have young children or watch Sesame Street for fun yourselves, let me fill you in. Grover has just returned from Jamaica where he was given a one of a kind tie-dye t-shirt. The scene then flashes to a video clip where a man demonstrates the traditional Jamaican tie-dye technique. He wraps a shirt around a bottle and secures it with rubberbands and then dunks it in a pot of dye which he has heated over a fire. The shirt is then removed, the rubberbands taken off, and the shirt re-wrapped and dyed again in a second color. This process is done a few more times using various colors. The shirt looks very brown at the end of the process. After it is washed some of the dye fades and the shirt has become various earth tones.

Well, I am always trying new techniques so I figured I would test this out. My husband and I wrapped some shirts around some bottles we had, (recycling at its best), and tried this technique. I was skeptical, but after the wash I realized the results were worse than I expected! The clothing looks like the rags we use to absorb excess dye! Needless to say, the results were not up to our standards, and you will not be seeing these pieces on our site. However, I am posting one here for everyone to have a good laugh.

Supplies For My Car Road Project

I stopped at Home Depot this morning and inquired about what paint to use for my garage floor neighborhood project. The salesperson suggested some indoor/outdoor spray paint and recommended that I use painter's tape to mark the areas I want to paint. Since I already painted the floor gray, I figured this would be the street, and I would paint the residential areas over the gray. I chose meadow green to spray for the "yards" and found a beige color to paint "houses". After that, I think the spray paint won't work for the details so I will have to break out my acrylics and a small paint brush. Hopefully nobody will walk on it until I put some kind of protective coating over it. I want to get started right away, but need to clean my garage again. We recently moved the baby into a toddler bed, and her crib is right where I need to paint. I'm contemplating a garage sale, if I can get over the heat.

Ideas O'Plenty

I recently bought a copy of Artful Blogging at my local book store. It was an easy read that has inspired me to get off my butt and start some of the creative projects I have been wanting to do. I have been very busy with tie-dying lately and building my online store. I am still going full throttle with this but am waiting to hear back from a knowledgeable website with some tips for dying rayon.









In the meantime, summer is starting and my kids will be home with me, so gone are the short quiet hours during the baby's nap where I can work on line. I decided this will be the perfect opportunity to work on some household projects I have been putting off since last year.

• Neighborhood Map-We recently painted our garage floor a light gray. I promised my son I would draw and paint our neighborhood on half of the floor for him to drive his hot wheels cars around on.




• Faux Mexican Tile-My home was build in the '70's and is surrounded by a hideous concrete patio. I would love to put down tile, but it is too costly and we would need to resurface the concrete due to cracks and it being uneven. I found directions on BHG.com for creating faux mexican tile with paint, so this is my current plan




• Wall Mural- I started a project in my dining room where I wanted to paint a french countryside as a background for these metal hot air balloons we bought. I started it several months ago, and left the project incomplete




• Faux Marble Desk Top- In addition to tie-dying, I do custom scrapbooking at Kizmet Kreations. Anyone that scrapbooks or does other crafts knows that a traditional desk is less than ideal as a workspace. Instead I created a series of large pieces of wood placed on top of filing cabinets to allow for a 14' desk space. The filing cabinets hold my supplies. I saw step by step instuctions on BHG.com and thought this would jazz up my work space at an affordable price.

I will keep you posted on by creative adventures around my house and document my work with my trusty camera to allow you to view my creations. See you soon!

-Donna