Ever heard of creating tie-dye like patterns on fabric with sharpie pens and alcohol? It’s a fun crafty experiment to do with the kids, (or with yourself, of course!) and if you do as I say rather than as we did, you may end up with something quite beautiful, and even useful as an applique of some kind. I once saw an entire comforter cover done with this technique, and it was fantastic.
The results of our little experiment are quite honestly not exactly museum worthy, or even blog worthy, but I have seen some gorgeous examples of this using beautiful colors which ran together more nicely than our basic red, blue and black. I would say avoid black altogether, and you’ll probably agree with me by looking at the before and after photo below!
You’ll Need:
- permanent markers in nice colors, avoid black
- a piece of cotton fabric, we used a piece of an old undershirt, you could even do this right onto a t-shirt, though I’d experiment on some scraps first
- rubbing alcohol and eyedropper
- a cup or glass
- a rubber band
How To: Stretch your piece of fabric over the mouth of the glass and secure with a rubber band, such that the fabric is taught. Draw a nice pattern with your permanent markers, try bulls-eye patterns or other concentric designs. Using an eyedropper carefully apply drops of alcohol to the exact center of your pattern. As the alcohol spreads outwards it will take with it the ink, hopefully creating a beautiful pattern. And even if the results aren’t exactly as you’d hoped, it’s still a fun activity, and after all sometimes it’s about the doing not the results!
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