4th of July, Tie Dye!

As a mom it's my job to come up with creative ways to celebrate holidays to get them in a festive spirit! 4th of July should scream red, white, and blue and crafts they can do "independently." Hehe. Why not instead of running to the stores (Old Navy always pops in my head for those tacky ON shirts with flags on them) make some shirts so they can be proud and if you can get a little information in them while they are sitting there getting their hands dirty than great!

We decided to try tie dye shirts...I have never tie dyed so I had to call a friend who has over and her and her husband went into "everything must have color!!!" mode with me. The kids got to help with theirs and really they couldn't of turned out better....Jack loves red and his had more red in the center and Jamey loves blue so his screamed blue! We also got some of the kids "dirty art shirts" and decided to give them some color too!

 If you've never tie dyed before let me go over some prices and best way to....we went to Michaels and bought the supplies...the kit was $19.99 (up to 30 items can be tie dyed with it) but I had a 40% off coupon you should always print out when going to Michaels, the shirts were 2 for $3 and I found a American flag bandana for $1, I also had another 15% off your entire order (another one you can print off). Our whole project came to under $20 and we did 11 shirts plus three whole colors left over.

 We swirled it in the center until we could place rubber bands around it like this....next there was a bit of debate whether to color in slices like above or go from center out with the color like below.....the slices came out 100% better! Let them sit for about 8 hours, rinse in cold water in your tub and wash in washer by themself ( I did red white and blue together and colored together). Ps the little sad one on left was one my friend's husband did....it just has stripes all the way across...cute but I liked the swirl better.

Here is some of our finished products...

These are some of the shirts that might of had paint on or chocolate milk stain....now you can't even see them!

 Finished red, white, and blue!

If this is too messy for your kids here is a second option....this year in vbs my kids got to make a fireworks shirt by using a koosh ball from the dollar store and dipping it in fabric paint and placing on a plain shirt...simple and a little less mess.