Hey everyone, it’s Elsie here and today we’re getting a little bit messy with an easy DIY project that’s great to get you and the kids crafting: tie-dye butterflies! As always I will list the specific supplies I used at the bottom of this post, but the beauty of this project is that all of the supplies will be things you already have in your house!
To make these tie-dye butterflies, you will need: kitchen towel or baby wipes, elastic bands, water, a paintbrush, some kind of watercolour paint or food dye, and clothespins and string to decorate!
First off I cut my paper towels into quarters, so I could make smaller butterflies and then I folded and twisted the paper towels and tightly wrapping two or three elastic bands around them. You can experiment with this step by trying different ways to fold, twist and tie to get different tie-dye patterns.
Next you can start painting! I decided to use my Vicki Boutin art crayons, because they are so easy to use, and I think kids would really love being able to scribble the colours down and create their own mixes! But watercolours or food-dye would also work well, you just need some kind of watery paint that is quite concentrated in colour to get the most vibrant patterns.
So I scribbled the art crayons onto some plastic and used a paintbrush to pick up the colour and soaked it onto the tied paper towels.
You can use as little or as many paint colours as you’d like, and I think kids would really love experimenting and trying to figure out what designs they can create! Once you’ve painted the towels, carefully remove the elastic bands, unravel and leave to dry.
As you can see from the picture below, these are my dried tie-dye pieces. Some were more successful than others, but still looked really cute once they were made into butterflies!
To make the butterflies pinch two opposite sides of the tie-dye pieces together and tie some string around the middle. Instead of cutting off the excess string I kept them a little long to create some antennas. Then I attached a clothespin to create the butterfly body. And voila! You have tie-dye butterflies!
If you have plain clothespins, you could decorate them with glitter and/or paint, but I used some pre-decorated ones from the 1Canoe2 ‘Twilight’, and Dear Lizzy ‘Stay Colorful’ collections. And although I didn’t have any googly eyes in my stash, I drew black dots onto small white cardstock circles and glued them to the tops of the clothespins, to create a cute little face on the butterfly!
I hope you all give these a try, they’re so fun to create and will make adorable decorations to stick on a wall or canvas, and you can even use them as DIY embellishments for your scrapbooks!
SUPPLIES: Vicki Boutin Art Crayons: Warm set (#343908), Cool set (#343909), Mister Bottles (#343907), Watercolor Brushes (#343926) - Dear Lizzy ‘Stay Colorful’ Mini Clothespins (#346497) - 1Canoe2 ‘Twilight’ Clothespins (#346442) - Raffia Ribbon: White (#348541), Pink (#348542), Blue (#348538) - Black Precision Pen .03 (#62311)
Comments