Tie Dye Your Summer

Thanks to iLovetoCreate and Blueprint Social for sponsoring today’s post. All opinions are my own.

Tie Dye Party

Summer is the perfect time for playing outdoors, enjoying the warm weather, and doing craft projects with friends. What could be better than putting all those things together and having a Tie Dye party?! Everyone loves a good party, and this is such a fun theme you can use for any occasion…a birthday, a shower, or just because! Here are some party tips to help you have a blast and Tie Dye your summer.

Tie Dye Party

First, every party starts with invitations. Just like the party itself, the invitations should be colorful, bright, and fun! To make things easy as pie, you can download these for free at iLovetoCreate’s Tie Dye Your Summer site! They’re created by Kara Woolery of Lillian Hope Designs, and not only can you print them for your own party, you can also get all kinds of other free coordinating printables like cupcake wrappers, party banners and signs, tent cards, water bottle wraps, candy bar wrappers, and more. How’s that for saving you time and money?

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Of course, a good party isn’t complete without sweet treats, right? As you plan, you’ll want to think about colorful snacks that go with the tie dye vibe. I opted for bright, multi-colored finger foods like candy and cereal and labeled them with one of the printable tent cards.

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I like to host parties in the early afternoon so that my guests have already eaten lunch, which saves me the time, expense, and stress of feeling like I need to provide an actual meal. Light snacks will do just fine…plus we need all our time for the fun part, tie dye!

tiedyesnacks

When planning favors for a tie dye party, once again I kept coming back to the idea of mixed colors, which led me to create this little take home gift. Inside the plastic bag is an assortment of colorful crafting supplies like buttons, pom-poms, bottle caps, and beads that guests can use for any kind of project they like. They can even choose to add some of the things, like the buttons, to their finished shirts!

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The other part of the favor is these multi-colored marbled clay jewelry dishes. They’re really easy to make {for a tutorial, check out this post} and you can either make them up ahead of time like I did, or have a separate station where your guests can work on creating these while their shirts are drying.

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When it comes to the main event, you’ll want to get the Tulip One-Step Tie-Dye Kit. It has a whopping 14 colors to choose from and enough supplies for 6 people. If you’re having more than six guests, you’ll want to grab an extra kit. Each dye comes in its own bottle in powder form; all you have to do is fill it up to the line with water, shake well, then squirt! The kit contains instructions for achieving various effects, like swirls, stripes, spots, and more, as well as rubber bands and gloves. It makes the process simple and less messy than other methods of dyeing you may have tried in the past.

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Each guest gets a plain white t-shirt {you’ll want to ask their sizes ahead of time} and can create whatever design he or she likes best! Here’s an example of how to create the swirl; you lay the shirt flat and start twisting it from the center. Then, place rubber bands around it in a criss-cross pattern.

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Once it’s secured, just squirt the dye onto the various sections of the shirt; this particular one was done with alternating purple and black for the Baltimore Ravens!

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Here’s the finished effect…

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For his shirt, Little Crafter decided to do a technique that involved rubber banding random sections of the shirt and dyeing them one color, then dyeing the rest of the shirt a different color. He chose red for the special sections and blue for the main part. You’ll notice that we made sure to use dropcloths {the kit includes a plastic one} as well as smocks to cover up our clothes. You can ask guests to wear old clothes or you can provide something for them to put over their existing outfits just in case, especially if your guests happen to be kids!

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LC was thrilled with how his shirt turned out; it’s the one on the far left and it looks fantastic!

Tie Dye

It’s so much fun to see how different people can take the same basic supplies; a shirt, some dye, and some rubber bands, and create finished products that are totally unique!

Tie Dye Shirts

What do you think? Would your family and friends enjoy getting together for a Tie Dye Party this summer? All you need is a Tulip One-Step Tie-Dye Kit, some white shirts, a few snacks, and the free printables on the site! Check out this video to see how simple it is!

Ready to host your own party?

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Get more inspiration for how to Tie Dye your summer by connecting with iLovetoCreate here:
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3 Comments

  1. My kids did tie die t shirts pretty much every year for as long as I can remember, such a great activity and they still have a couple each they wear now! They gradually got more sophisticated with the designs as they got older.
    A lovely party activity – now why did I never think of that??!

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