DIY Tie Dye Beach Towel

Life has been so crazy busy. It seems the last few months have been about DIY fixing up a house I won’t be living in anymore, finding a new place to live, visiting family before I move far, far away and trying to get work done. Seriously… it’s absolutely been insane!

And when things get crazy, so do I. My anxiety hits an all new high, I freak out regularly and give myself headaches from somehow raising my blood pressure. This is why my Rob is so good for me. Things are crazy and I’m in panic mode and he takes me to the beach. We’ve gone and spent just a half an hour in the Gulf and it changed my whole attitude. It turns out that I love the beach. Love, love, love. I think I was born in the wrong part of the U.S. because I should have been a beach baby!

They say it’s never too late, though. So in my 30s I’ve found a love for the surf and sand in spite of the fact there are no bathrooms. Like none. Peeing outside is not my thin g and I still want to go! :) Right now I own 9 bathing suits. I’ve never owned that many in my whole life and now I have tons and tons for our many day trips! It helps that we can use the beach and the water for photo back drops. I’m still not too comfortable with pics as you can see above but my Rob is helping me out with that!

So I’ve been crafting and working and the beachy lifestyle has been creeping in. I’ve made my own  swim cover up and now I’ve tie dyed my own beach towel. Since I lost a lot of photos I rocked out a solid color towel to show you the DIY. You can use either a single color in a dye packet or liquid form OR a tie dye kit. A kit will give you several colors and it’s my preference but either are awesome!

Firstly you’ll need to grab some 100% cotton towels. I found these big, bad boys at Michael’s on clearance.

Tie it up however you choose. My single color one here is multiple bullseyes. Simply pull the fabric up and band off a few times. Grab the fabric in another section and do the same. Boom! Lots of pretty little circles!

This is my dye. If I was going with one color it was going to be pink… of course! The solid tie dye is pretty awesome. I prefer the multiple colors but monochromatic can be awesome too!

With kits you add water to the little bottles and squeeze on. For this type of dye fill up a stainless sink or a large bowl with hot, hot, hot water. Add some salt for even brighter colors.

Toss your towel in and stir it and flip it over and over. Now I found that the towels can tie a bit less tightly than tee shirts. It’s something to do with the terrycloth. Anyhoo when you dye with a single color you keep it int he dye for a while. Like 10-20 minutes. Eventually the dye is going to seep a bit into your ties. The more saturated the dye solution (more dye vs. water) the less time you’ll need it to soak and the more white areas you will have. That being said I filled my sink up with way more water than I intended and I have a lighter color with less white than I’d like. But it’s still pretty so whatever!

You can’t really tell how dark your color is going to be until you rinse it and then dry it. Packets will tell you to dye to the desired color but how the heck are you supposed to know that with all of those variables!? Just do your best and typically you’ll need your fabric to be many times darker than what you want right out of the dye.

Rinse out the dye as much as possible. Note, the fabric will be HOT since we put hot, hot water in the sink so be careful. Since this is going on you when you’re wet I highly recommend giving it a quick wash to remove excess dye.

I dryed my towel out to be nice and flat for pics by laying it out on the concrete. With 108 degrees it dried pretty dang fast! My white is far less than I wanted and my color far fainter but it’s still really pretty. In fact my Momma loves it!

The white space on my towel is fab and I am a big, big fan of the multiple colors. One turned out to be maroon instead of purple which didn’t really go with my color scheme but I still love it!

The fact that I got to go to the beach to take pictures of my new towel was the icing on the cake for this project and in the end, it was a GREAT day!

Thanks yet again to my Rob for taking pictures for this post, even if I grimaced through most of them :)