Stocking tomorrow!

Lots of pics of dyed stuff :)

Earth prefold & tee set

Princess Dress

Octopus tote- I am not happy with the way this came out.

Star baby bunting

LWI Lap tees

Tie dye lap tees

Onesie & Playsilk set

Scrunchies

Bathing suit

And this playsilk… I didn’t tie it up with rubber bands like normal, just kind of painted the colors on randomly after I folded it up. I LOVE IT and I have no clue if I can ever repeat it

Some pics of the dying process

My tie dye towels

I use vases for LWI… I prefer them to be clear so I can see if even the bottom got saturated.

This one I was attempting to do it patriotic, red white & blue
BUT… just five minutes later the dye had spread

Custom Tie Dye Tutorial

I’m not going to give away all my secrets…

1. Decide to open customs.
2. Set them up on the store’s website. This takes up to two hours. Why? Because I have to go in and manually mark them all as unsold to get them to show up on the site. I could leave them up all the time, but then people would order them when customs aren’t open and it’s a huge pain in my butt. I don’t get the wholesale discount when I don’t order in bulk, add in shipping and time and energy and I end up paying them to take my stuff.
3. Send email announcing customs are open and spam places I post.
4. Take orders. This is the easy part LOL
5. Verify those orders- you want pink and brown tie dye but you don’t it to look too girly… um…
6. Close customs. Again, a couple hours individually marking them all sold. My store saves EVERY product I’ve ever listed, even if it’s long gone, so I have to sort though tons of products in the behind the scenes part of my webpage.
7. Print out each order.
8. Place wholesale order for blanks.
9. Tap feet until it arrives.
10. Open huge box of white clothes and sort everything. Make sure they sent everything I ordered, in the right sizes. Make sure I ordered everything I needed to.
11. Wash and dry all the blanks. Sometimes this can take two or three loads of laundry. Don’t use dryer sheets or fabric softener.
12. While the stuff is washing, prep the dyes. I have over thirty colors, so I go through the list and figure out what ones I need for the order, and measure and mix them all in the squirt bottles. This takes up my whole counter LOL
13. Resort all the dried blanks into piles of LWI and tie dye.
14. Take all the stuff to be tie dyed & soak in soda ash fixer for 30 minutes- overnight, depending on what is going on in my house. I do this in a bucket in my sink. The bucket holds maybe…. 4 grown up sized tee shirts. So this takes a LONG time.
15. Hand wring out everything that’s been soaked. Again this takes forever and hurts my hands. I often make Aaron do it when he’s home LOL
16. Rubber band up all the stuff to be tie dyed. I have a lot of rubber bands. I do this on my kitchen floor, because my counter is covered in the dye I prepped.
17. Then I spread out my tie dye towels. When I first started, I took an old bath towel to put under the stuff I was dying, to soak up the extra dye. I’ve now got probably at least eight LOL
18. Dye up stuff, often stopping to mix more dye of the popular colors.
19. Put everything in plastic shopping bags and let sit over night.
20. Wash tie dye towels.
21. Repeat steps 12-20 if there’s more than what would be one small load of laundry… as many times as needed. This time- it was three.
22. Get the LWI stuff ready- put each blank in it’s own container
23. I mix the dyes for that in an old baby bottle as I use them, because I don’t usually need a whole 8 ounces from my squirt bottles.
24. LWI dye stuff, and let sit for 60 minutes.
25. Once that’s done, pour soda ash solution over each LWI dyed blank.
26. Let sit 20 minutes.
27. Rinse each item separately by hand and wring out.
28. Throw in the washer, and set to extra large load, even though it’s only a small load. Rinse twice.
29. Then wash & dry all the LWI stuff.
30. Repeat steps 22-29 if there’s more LWI than what fits in my containers. This time it I didn’t need to repeat these ones
31. By then it’s the next day, and I can rinse and hand wring out the tie dyed stuff.
32. Rinse twice in the washer, same as the LWI, small load size, with extra large size amount of water.
33. Wash and dry all the tie dyed stuff.
34. Then I hand stamp all the stuff that needs stamps.
35. Let the stamped stuff sit for 24 hours.
36. Package up all the dyed stuff with their proper order form.
37. Print postage.
38. Ship.
39. Pray it doesn’t get abducted by the postal workers.
40. Pray the recipients like my work.

Small stocking

I’ve stocked a few LWI dyed prefolds (all premium size) and a couple new playsilks over on my main site.

The diaper sell out continues- get them while you can… I won’t be reordering diapering products aside from the occasional prefold to dye.

In addition to those items, I’ve added another skein of sock  yarn to the Hyena Cart and six LWI dyed KL0s from the outlet.  They all go live tomorrow at noon

A few more pictures

This frog is on the front of a long sleeved LWI dyed shirt.  On a pair of matching pants, I stamped this cute lizard:

I also made another shirt, this one was done in greens & blacks and has a car theme.

I had totally forgotten to take nice pics of these before I sent them out to their new owners   BUT maybe they can send in some action shots!

And here’s a picture of Lili in a tunic I tie dyed for her.  Mia is in an adorable tee handpainted by Lori of Beneath the Rowan Tree.  You can also check out her blog- its on my list of links on the right

Finally :)

All the blanks have landed!  They’re currently being prepped for dying, yay!  I also got three new colors- Navy Blue, Forest Green, and Dark Brown.  I can’t wait to play with them.

 Here are the LWI dyed KL0s I did- They each have a matching doubler.

Crafting ADD

I think today I was suffering from some serious crafting ADD.  I did get a lot of stuff done though.  I dyed some sock yarn, beaded a bracelet, made half a dozen cell phone charms, LWI dyed half a dozen prefolds and two playsilks… and I took the product pictures, edited them, and uploaded most of that to my store already.  The only things I haven’t added are the cell phone charms, because I think I want to put those on Holiday Lane.  I did take the photos and edit them already though, so they are ready to go.  I even took better pictures of some yarn I already have for sale on my Hyena Cart.

The sock yarn is still drying, but I just know it’s going to look great once I re-skein it.

  

The prefolds- some of them I dyed as an experiment.  We were talking about how sometimes customers ask you to create something and you think it’s going to come out awful, but then once you do it, it is awesome.  So I decided to LWI dye with color combinations I’d never think of using.  I got some really neat results!

        

Hot Pink & Avocado, Khaki & Chinese Red, Orchid & Chartreuse

And here’s a peek at the cell phone charms for Holiday Lane:

     

Custom Tie Dye

SURPRISE! I’ve decided to open for a quick round of customs. This will only be open for a week, so I will be closing this round of customs on Sunday, October 14th (or sooner if I get overwhelmed with orders). If you want something you don’t see listed, just email me & if I can find it, I’ll set it up for you so you can order it.

A few words about our custom tie dye:

*All tie dye is unique, it is not an exact science. No two items will come out the same.

*To see examples of items I’ve dyed in the past, check out our Sold Items.

*There are so many things I can dye in addition to the tees & such I list. There are several style sundresses, skirts, household items, etc. Please feel free to email me & we will find exactly what you are looking for.

*In addition to tie dye, I also offer LWI dying.

*Please think about the colors you chose- they will probably overlap, so if you chose for example, yellow & purple, there’s a good chance you’ll inadvertantly get some brown on your item.

*Please allow approximately 3 weeks from the time I close customs to receive your items. Plan ahead- if you want something for the fall or Christmas, this is probably the last time you’ll be able to get it in time this year

Kid sets!

I figured out what to do with a few of the wine bags- sets for kids!

http://hyenacart.com/prod_details.php?id=20202&vid=1223

These were fun, I want to do some more… now what else can I put in them??