Did you know that you can make your own colored jeans?? yep, DIY! Colored jeans are trendy right now, but I’m not sold on the trend, so I for sure didn’t want to spend a lot of money on them. So I decided to make my own….and I made a tutorial in case you want to do the same, including my tips on using dye….
First up, start with a light pair of jeans. I, of course, recently got rid of all my light jeans, thinking they were way out of style. So of course I had to go buy some for a few dollars from a thrift store – ah, the cycle of clothes continues. Here they are:
I wonder if it would work to take dark jeans and bleach them lighter. Someone try that and let me know 🙂
You want light jeans so the color shows up better.
Now, on to the dying – I used liquid Rit dye, in “tangerine”. I wanted a vivid color so I used the whole bottle. I got it at Michael’s with my 40% off coupon.
I have several clothes-dying tips for you:
—PREwet everything! That will help the dye distribute evening. So I got the jeans and the shirt completely saturated – no dry spots at all – you can see they’re wet in the above picture.
—Use HOT water. I think this helps lock in the color.
—You can use a bucket, or your washing machine – I just plugged up my kitchen sink and used that. I filled it with enough water to comfortably cover everything I was dying.
—While you’ve got a sink full of dye, consider anything else you might want to chuck in – I always feel like I’m wasting good dye when I’m done, so use it to it’s full potential – that’s why I threw in the tshirt.
—Read the directions – you’re supposed to add salt. I just poured some in, guestimating instead of precise measuring.
—Stir the salt til it dissolves. Then pour in the dye and stir it until it looks evenly mixed.
—When you add your clothes, they’ll get air bubbles in them and want to float to the top. You don’t want that – everything needs to be submerged, so push them down and push out the air bubbles.
—You might want to use a glove for that step I just mentioned. Or not.
—I let it soak about 20 minutes – about halfway through I stirred up all the clothes and pushed them down again just to make sure they were evenly getting dye.
–And voila – perfectly dyed!! No splotches or anything – I was super pleased!
The jeans took the color great too!
I used that orange shirt to make the cowl you see me wearing – I’ll have that tutorial up later today….
I love you and your blog and everything! But please, spend the money on colored jeans!!! These should not be allowed in public!
I’ve never even thought of dying jeans. And I don’t think they look bad!
I actually just did this with a light pair of jeans! I didn/tcolor them though, I just made them a darker denim color! I love the wasy mine turned out too. And I think yours look great! Forget those naysayers and flaunt em, bc they are cute! 🙂
What a great idea!! I really like them and think that you should wear them in public 🙂
I cannot talk my husband into the colored jeans trend, he says that with my pink hair it’ll look like I’m trying too hard. But, I think I’m going to have to go for the diy version, because yours are FAB!
Wow! This is exactly what I was wondering about,how to get that blended colored denim effect but could not find anything. I just happened to stumble upon this. I will keep it in mind. I will try the liquid dyes. I dyed some medium blue jeans purple with powder dye back in the 90’s and they turned out well. It is an interesting,mixed two-tone effect since you are coloring on top of the blue denim,rather than on a plain white or off-white color. I see these type of jeans at stores but they are the skinny,low-rise. I prefer the 80’s baggy,tapered leg or straight leg high-waist style. Those are hard to find anymore and so expensive! Now I can customize any jeans this way and save money too! Thanks so much for posting.