Tie-Dye Day
This was my third Tie-Dye event at the library. We do it every summer, and it always brings a crowd. In the past, we have ordered white tote bags for patrons to tie-dye, but this year we told them to bring your own item to dye.
I set up outside. All tables are wrapped in plastic and taped down. At the end I have a table with tubs of clean water to wet the items to be dyed in, gloves, Ziploc bags for finished products, extra instructions, and wet ones & paper towels. I also wheel out our big garbage can.
I have a few bottles of dye on each table, along with rubber bands and laminated instructions (also taped down). I have several different tutorials (like the Bullseye technique in the picture) printed that I got from Tulip's site Tie Dye Your Summer. They have a variety there!
A few things I've learned from doing a tie-dye event for a large crowd:
Get the “Create Basics” kit from Walmart. The Tulip brand has bigger bottles, but you have to cut open pouches with the dye and pour them in the bottles and it's a mess and takes forever. Plus they give you more dye than bottles! The Create Basics brand already has the dye in the bottle for you, so all you have to do is put water in and shake them up.
If you do use Tulip, make sure you buy some extra plastic bottles (and rinse out and save the plastic bottles and caps for next year) since they give you an abundance of dye.
Get extra blue. Every year we run out and people are asking for more.
Wear gloves the entire event. Just leave them on.
If possible, tape the instructions to the Ziploc bag for the finished product.
Laminate all tutorials and instructions. You’ll still probably have to throw them away after, but they need to be laminated while they’re on the table with people coming and going so you can wipe them off between patrons.
Make sure to tell the kids to put the gloves on before they stick their hands in the water. If their hands are wet it’ll be real hard to get the gloves on.
Cover the tables in plastic-I used painter’s plastic dropcloth from Lowe’s. The Walmart tablecloths don’t cut it. Cover the table and tape them to the underside. You don’t want to leave anything hanging down because the dye will just run down it and make more of a mess.
If dye does get on the table, Clorox Wipes will get most of it off.
This is the directions page I print out for the patrons.
