How to Tie Dye tips and tricks for beginners

Hey guys , it's Sherry Vegas and welcome back to my channel .

So today we're gonna be doing a really fun project that you can do while you are stuck inside and that is tie dying .

So I'm gonna show you a few tips and tricks .

So that way you can get a really great tie dye every single time you're gonna need a few items to get started .

The first one is a tie dye kit .

I got this off my Amazon store and it's just gonna make your life a lot easier if you buy them premade up .

And this wasn't that expensive at all .

And there are 12 different colors in this .

So that way I don't have to make any like custom blends .

So that way it keeps it nice and simple items that you're gonna tie dye .

I've got a few different things .

Um I've got a calico apron and it's just because I need a new apron because my other one is in resin .

And then I have got just a little fabric bag , just plain and simple , little tote bag that's white .

And then I've got some old shirts .

These are old white shirts .

That have got stains on them .

So I thought it would be great to kind of revamp them and tie dye them .

So that way I don't have to chuck them out .

So I've got two just old white t-shirts , one bag and one apron that I'm gonna be dying today .

Some plastic gloves just because the dye can stay in your hands .

It will come off eventually .

But for about 24 hours , you're gonna have rainbow colored hands .

So just make sure you've got some gloves and then rubber band .

So you're gonna need quite a lot of those .

I just bought a pack of rubber bands and they're super cheap .

You can get them from like your grocery stores or from c craft supply places , but you're going to need a lot of them .

If you don't have that , you can also use zip ties .

They're a little bit harder to work with and you can't reuse them .

But that is another option .

And the last two items that do come in handy is a drying rack and some plastic bags .

So this tie dye kit does come with pretty much everything that you need .

I did buy some extra uh rubber bands just because I know I'm gonna be using quite a lot of them .

So I've got a really great variety of colors .

There's 12 in this and then it does come with some rubber bands as well .

A plastic sheet and some disposable gloves .

Uh if you don't have your own .

So the first thing you wanna do is protect your surface because tae dying is messy and you don't want to make a mess .

Step number two is wet .

All of your items to begin with something you do need to consider when you are choosing the items to tie dye , is that your natural fibers always tie dye better .

So your cottons , your linens , your silks , your wolves , they just naturally die better .

You can use your synthetic fibers , but just note that they're not gonna be as good .

Also , another thing to think about is if you're using brand new items , just give them a wash before you do go to tie dye them a lot of the time they'll have chemicals from when um , they were manufactured and that can affect the way that the dye is gonna adhere to your items .

So just make sure you give everything a wash before you do decide to tie dye it .

I also wanted to just let you guys know that I do have uh some new merchandise up in my store .

You can see the little bar down below where you can buy everything .

This is one of the tops .

This is the long sleeve one .

I've already got paint on it because I wear it to paint in .

Um , but yeah , so this is the peace sign flower which you can buy in my store now .

So yeah , just go and check it out down below .

This next step is super simple .

All you need to do is just fill right up to that line with water , then just put the lid on and give it a good shake until all of your pigment has dissolved into that water .

Sometimes you do get a little bit of pigment just sitting down at the bottom .

So make sure you do get that to dissolve in with the rest of the water .

I've got all the colors that I'm gonna be using today mixed up .

I'm using the pink purple , a light blue , navy blue and the yellow .

I just wanted to point out to just think a little bit about color theory when you are choosing your colors .

If you're going to be mixing a red and a blue , if you ever where they mix um where they meet , you're going to be getting purple .

So that's just something to think about when you are picking your colors because they will be overlapping in certain areas .

I would not recommend using orange , green and purple together .

Cos generally this when they are mixed together just makes brown .

So that's something to consider when you are picking your colors is how they're going to blend together when they do meet in those certain areas .

So there are multiple ways that you can create patterns in your tie dye .

I'm gonna show you four different ways that I like to use the first one that I'm gonna do is I want to place at the front of my t-shirt down and then I'm gonna work from the back .

I'm gonna pinch and then I'm just gonna twist inwards and I'm gonna try and get this nice and tight and I'm gonna grab my rubber bands and I'm gonna section it off into six slices .

So go half , half and then one there and one there .

So just like that and now I've got my six little slices that I'm gonna be sectioning off .

The reason why you place the good side down for like your front of your t-shirt down onto the table is you get a really perfect spiral but on the other side , you just don't .

So that's why you wanna place the front of your t-shirt onto the table for this shirt .

I've decided I'm gonna use three colors and I'm gonna alternate them .

So they should repeat twice .

You wanna put a good amount of color but you do not wanna oversaturated it .

If you can see a lot of dye coming back up , it just means you've put too much on and that can cause it to bleed and lose that really cool tie dye effect .

Just realized I've actually made eight sections and not six .

So .

Oh well , then I'm just gonna get my tray out and I'm gonna put this on just so that way the extra dye can just drip down and it's not pulling and sitting in that dye and bleeding into other spots .

So now I'm just gonna match up the side .

So wherever I put purple on one side , I just do it again , on the same side , on the same slice , I mean , and this is where your plastic bag comes into play .

Or a Ziploc bag , anything that you can use to keep the moisture in .

You just wanna then place it in and leave it to sit for around 6 to 8 hours .

And as you can see , there was quite a lot of dye that pulled and that would have maybe spread into a color or a little slice of my wrap that I didn't want it to do .

So that's why that these little trays are super helpful when you are doing your tie dying next up , you've got the Scrunch which is literally just scrunching it all in together , nice and tight and then just grabbing some elastic bands and just placing it over .

There's no right or wrong way to how you place your bands with this one and tight .

And then I'm gonna be using my three different colors .

So I've got my light blue , my navy and my purple and I'm just gonna be putting this on wherever really .

And then just getting my tray again and flipping it and then you just wanna grab your another plastic bag , place it inside and wrap it up .

So that way it's gonna stay moist for about 6 to 8 hours .

Now , we have the roll .

So you just wanna grab your piece and just start rolling it nice and tight .

And you can either do this length waves or width ways just depending on where you want your pattern to be going .

So just keep it really tight as you roll it up .

You can also use um like a piece of wood towel and put that into the center and roll it around , kind of like wrapping paper .

So now I'm just gonna use smaller elastic bands , cos I need this to be quite tight .

So you might have to go twice around if it's not tight enough and you're just gonna be going along and every so often however big width you want , you can have them really close or really spaced apart .

You can either do it really evenly or have them just random .

I think I'm gonna do random on this .

So for this one , I would recommend using zip ties because that way you're not trying to pull the elastic band around again and again , and zip ties can get really tight .

You can tighten them quite well .

For this one , I'm just gonna stick to two colors and I'm gonna alternate them through and then once again , just flip it over and I'm just gonna match them up .

So for this last one , I'm just gonna be picking a place pinching and just doing little circles with my rubber bands , make sure that they're nice and tight and then doing another ring .

So pinching it up again and then again , and creating as many rings as you want for each sort of circle here .

Just also to think about your placement of where you want your circles to go .

So I might do one on the shoulder for this one .

I am using the light blue , the pink and the yellow and I'm just going to be randomly placing color all over this shirt .

I'm not gonna put too much color on the back because I quite like , I wanna still have a bit of white coming through this , but I am just gonna put a little bit and then once again , I am going to put it in a plastic bag and I let it sit and soak in for around 6 to 8 hours .

It has been just over six hours and I think the dye has really taken well to the shirt as well as my other items .

So I'm gonna rinse them out one at a time just in some normal water and then I'm gonna uh wash them , dry them and get to see what they look like tomorrow .

So I'm very excited .

I think they have turned out amazing .

Um I just wanted to let you guys know that I have a tiktok now .

It's Sherry Vegas and it just shows kind of like behind the scenes of what I'm working on all of like my test runs before I do like a video .

So you kind of get a like a little sneak peek beforehand .

So if you wanna go and follow me on there , I try to keep like all of my social media showing something different .

So nothing is , is the same .

So on Instagram , you get to see more of my personal life on Facebook .

I keep you updated more in depth .

And now on tiktok , you're gonna see like kind of a sneak peek at behind the scenes beforehand .

So I'm gonna wash all of this out .

If you're liking this video so far , please give it a big thumbs up and if you're new to my channel , don't forget to subscribe .

So this is the one that we did the Scrunch on the Scrunch and then we rubber band it and we used the light blue navy blue and the purple and I've gotta say this is so beautiful .

So it was the white face just that plain .

Um I think it's just a plain cotton white bag , but this has turned out so good .

I've just given all of these a good rinse off and I thought I would show them before I put them in the wash because they will lose a little bit of vibrancy .

When I do put them in the wash , you need to wash these individually unless you've used the same um colors throughout .

Because if I add these two in together .

I'm gonna get a bit of like the leftover dye transferring .

So I'll need to wash , do four separate washes cos I've done different color patterns .

So this was the spiral that we twisted up and then put rubber bands around and that's the front , that's the back .

I think that turned out really awesome .

It's going to fade out a little bit once I do pop it through the wash and do a proper wash with it .

The Scrunch bag where I just scrunched it up and I did the three different colors there that's turned out really great as well .

Then I've got my apron .

This was with the two colors and it was rolled up .

I do think I should have done the elastic bands a little bit tighter um just to get a little bit more definition , but I am really happy with how this turned out .

I think um as I said before , the Ziplock ties would do really great on this technique because you can pull them super tight .

And then lastly , I have this one which was just uh the circles going down , creating the rings now because I used uh pink , yellow and blue .

I'm obviously gonna get like your purples and greens popping up through because they've mixed and blended and created , you know , those extra colors .

Thank you guys so much for watching that tutorial .

If you liked it , give it a big thumbs up if you new to my channel .

Please do subscribe as it helps me out .

I also if you liked this video and you want to see more tie dying .

I've got a few ideas .

Um One is Tie dying with ice .

So doing ice dyes .

The second one is doing the Japanese tie dye effect .

Uh The third one is doing the wet and dry .

So the same techniques but as we did with these ones , how we wet them do , I'm gonna try and show you the difference between um tie dying on wet fabrics and tie dying on dry fabrics .

And what was the last idea ?

Oh Bleach tie dying um where you get already colored shirts and then bleach them on tie dye that way .

So if you want to see any of those tutorials , let me know in the comments below which one you want to see and I'll do that one next .

Thank you guys so much for watching .