It's time for something a little bit different and a lot of fun. I joined up with the Pintester (go click that link to see her VERY funny and fun blog) to try out one of my many Pinterest pins.
I chose Sharpie marker pen tie dying! I pinned this pin several months ago thinking I would do it with my kids. But inspiration struck me to do it with my class. I teach adults with disabilities. And I'm always looking for something fun but educational to do with them. I won't get into the science lesson because well, I don't feel like it and I really didn't get into it that heavy anyway when I did it with my class. Honestly it was something fun and different to do with my class. And we had a blast!
This is what I learned. It works great. It's also very, very, very easy. I have a few adults in wheelchairs who were able to do this pretty much by themselves. Well they could do the Sharpie part themselves but the rubbing alcohol part I did for everybody just to be on the safe side. So if you're doing this with children don't let them handle the rubbing alcohol. Using just the cups and a dot pattern or even pictures works well it makes really fun designs as you can see.
But I warn you it takes a lot more alcohol to spread the designs than it tells you in the pin. I used WAY more alcohol than I thought I would. The best looking design ended up being the more traditional tie-dyed twist effect. You twist the T-shirt up and then add rubber bands every so often. Then you just color in wherever there's white with a Sharpie. The best result was when there was not any white showing after we twisted it and colored it in.
We also learned through default that T-shirts that are not washed first work better. All my students brought in their own T-shirts and some were pre-washed and some were brand-new. After taking them all home and washing them in hot water to set the color and then drying them on very hot, we found that the brand-new T-shirts held the ink better then the pre-washed T-shirts. This is also not with the pin tells you on Pinterest. It tells you to pre-wash the T-shirts. But don't if you want the color to be more vivid and last longer.
So all in all a good pin and I really love this idea of picking a pin on my Pinterest board and trying it out, then blogging it on this blog. So I think I will try to do this more often. I'd like to say once a week. But we all know that's not going to happen. So I'm thinking maybe once a month. We'll see. You know me it could go four months before I get around to another one but I'll try I promise.
And again go check out the Pintester NOW! http://pintester.com/2013/05/the-pintester-movement-craft-all-the-things
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