CIY...To Dye or Not

Create it Yourself will be a feature on my blog from now on, and CIY channels my inner (very) amateur aspiration to create clothes, accessories... on a low budget. Blumarine's over indulgence in tie-dye in their Spring-Summer 2010 ready-to-wear collection, was my inspiration to create a tie-dye t-shirt. You can tie-dye pretty much anything though. I wanted to make something wearable, fun and cheap (everything cost just under €10-not bad!) and this is what I got:

The colours on the t-shirt are supposed to be sunflower yellow and Antique grey, however they didn't quite turn out like that. The yellow is not as strong as I thought it would have been and the antique grey is more of a khaki colour. But I'm still proud of my effort! I would wear this t-shirt with a short or long black skirt and maybe throw a denim/ leather jacket over.

1.Plain Black Bodycon skirt from Topshop.

2.Plain Black asymmetric, maxi skirt from New Look.

3.Indigo denim jacket from Topshop.

4.Office sandals.











5.Clogs from Office also.








Materials needed:
1. A plain white t-shirt or whatever piece of clothing you fancy... my t-shirt is 100% cotton from Primark and it cost €3.
2. Tie-dye, I bought two sachets of Dylon dye at €2.99 each
3. Water, elastic bands, etc!
4. This isn't a material, but some patience would come in handy. The tie-dye process is quite a long one. Each colour takes an hour to dye, and you have to stir the item regularly. (You can also only do one colour and have white as the other colour). I won't bore you with the details of the step-by-step process of doing tie-dye...instructions are widely available on the Internet and on the packet of the dye. Its really easy though!



Sunflower yellow. The t-shirts actually look like Jellyfish in the water. Lovely!



Antique Grey colour...more like black.

If you do not have the patience to make your own tie-dye anything, well then there are plenty of options on the high street and from the Spring-Summer 2010 Blumarine collection, of course.

Like this All Saints cardigan.

And this tie-dyed denim one-shouldered dress by Rare.




Mango does tie-dye too! Love this colour blue. Mango t-shirt sold on ASOS.






Will you be tie-dying it this Summer? Let me know!





Source: Images from Store Websites