How-To Make a Tie Dye Skull Shirt

Hi , I'm Laurie and I love to create studios with the I Never Dies .

And today we're going to play with some tie dye .

Halloween is right around the corner and it inspired me to create a school tie .

And I'm going to show you how to do that today as well as give you some helpful hints and tips that will help you get a great tie dye result every time , first thing we're going to do is get our shirt ready .

This is a shirt that I've already washed and left damp .

And so first we're going to fold it lengthwise .

You want to make sure you get all the wrinkles out .

You want a nice smooth fold right down the center .

Now we have our shirt folded lengthwise down the center .

I have my skull pattern .

When you're tying a pattern like this , you want to kind of exaggerate your curves .

So here I've made a very defined curve and a very defined line and that just helps you to get a more finished look when you're done .

So we fold it in half and we place it right along that center line and then we're going to use a washable marker to outline our design .

I like using a washable marker better than chalk because the chalk tends to , it can sometimes blur or , or get washed away .

And this way you have a nice clean line .

So we just trace right around our skull and then his eye is gonna be right there .

So we draw that in and half of his nose and a little line to let you know where his mouth is going to be for most of the tie dye work that I do .

I use zip ties .

That's just a personal preference .

You can use rubber bands , you can use sine , whatever works best for you for this particular tie .

I use a combination of rubber bands and zip ties because some of the things that we're going to be tying up are small and delicate and so need a smaller rubber band .

So first thing we're going to do , we're just gonna pleat his nose and you just plead it and little small pleats till your line is a straight line and tie it off with a small rubber band .

Take your time on these steps .

This is the most important part of your design .

So take your time and really try to get those lines , those pleaded out straight .

Next , we're gonna do his eye .

It's kind of a modified bull's eye .

We're just going to pull it all up into a tube shape like that .

And again , trying to keep the line as straight , all the way around as possible .

You can see that I've got it fairly straight and tie up with another small rubber band .

So now you have his eye and his nose tied off .

So we're gonna go ahead and do the outline and it's the same technique .

We're just going to pleat the fabric into a straight line , twisting it as you need .

It helps to do your pleating with one hand underneath the T shirt .

So that way you be sure and get all of the fabric into the pleat .

And as you can see here , I have my skull shape in a straight line for this .

I'm going to use a zip tie and there's our skull face .

I prefer to do my dying on a baking rack .

It helps to keep the dyes from pooling and muddying up your shirt , the colors mixed together and sometimes the result isn't as clean and as nice as you would like .

So by dying your shirt on a rack , it helps to get rid of all the excess dyes .

So it doesn't end up on a new project .

We're just going to arrange this .

Now , there's his mouth right there .

This , we're not going to tie , we're just going to kind of pinch it up again , making sure you have both thicknesses of the fabric with the line on top like that .

You always want to wear gloves when you tie dye because although tie dye looks really good on the shirt , it doesn't look so great on your hands today .

I'm using two colors .

We're going to use purple and black .

All right , let's do some tie dye in .

You want to make sure your dyes are mixed .

Well , when you shake them , be sure to put your finger over the cap .

I like to use a paper towel over the lid of the bottle when I open it just to avoid any overspray .

This is our black dye and we're going to dye our face .

Now , we want to make sure that the eye is up nice and tall .

So you only get the dye on that area , same thing with the mouth portion and his nose as well .

So we're just gonna slowly and carefully apply a little black dye , make sure that I nice and saturated and then just a little bit here for the nose .

How nice the dye just runs right off cools down below and it's not going to muddy up our shirt .

Now for his mouth , we're just going to apply a few dots of color right along that line .

I want him to be outlined so that you see the outline of the face .

So I'm going to go ahead and continue with my black tie outside of the zip tie .

I've left a small amount of white along that zip tie because the dye will want to bleed over and I want to keep a nice clean border .

So we'll just apply as much die as we like .

I'm going to accent my design now with purple dye , if you wanted to , you could also add consecutive zip ties outside this first one and you would get consecutive skull shapes .

But for this one , we'll just have our one skull guy .

So now that we've got our shirt dyed and the colors and patterns that we want , we're going to wrap it in plastic and allow it to sit 6 to 8 hours or overnight .

Today , we just use the two colors , but we have an endless variety of dye colors that you could use to really personalize this shirt and make it your own .

You're on your way to some fun Halloween times and I'm Laurie and I love to create studios and Diy never dive .