DIY Red,White and Blue

 

Since we had so much fun doing the tie dye shirts for Big J’s birthday I thought it was about time to do some more, perfect for all the red, white and blue holidays coming up.

I found shirts at a couple of different stores to fit all the different sizes and shapes. Most of the shirts were in the $2.50 range.

Each person got to pick the kind of design they wanted.

Here we are starting on LaLa’s shirt.

She is pointing out where she wants the spots to go.

After she decided we had put enough dots on we checked the overall pattern to make sure we liked it.

Her shirt was done.

Then on to Roo’s.

Big J decided he was capable of doing his own.

Big Daddy took over the dye when it came time for his shirt also.

This is mine in progress.

I probably should have worn gloves…I still have some dye that I haven’t been able to scrub or bleach off.

This only our second time to dye and we are still learning. One thing we learned this time is that we should have let the shirts dry completely before putting them in the washer. Now instead of red, white and blue; we have red, light blue and blue. Oh well.

And since we did custom shirts I thought the girlies needed hair pretties to go with their shirts. And there isn’t very much room for error here so I didn’t have to worry about any light blue surprises.

Start by wrapping grosgrain ribbon around a dowel. You can secure the ends with anything that is oven safe. I secure mine by knotting the ends on the dowel. Then you bake them in a 275 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Let the ribbon cool completely and remove them from the dowel.

Then cut the ribbon into smaller lengths. The first few times I made these I was religious about measuring the length. Now? Not so much.

Cover a french clip with ribbon.

What is a french clip?

One of these.

I use the dowels that I cooked my ribbon as a fence to stack the short ribbon tubes.

You want to have some order in the stack. It doesn’t need to be exact, but you want to have the colors spread through-out the completed clip.

Then wrap a wire tightly around the tubes and glue to the ribbon covered clip. I use hot glue.

And Voila! You have cuteness.

Or even more cuteness.

Here are the kiddos decked out in our DIY red, white and blue.