Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Dyed Roses = Pinterest Fail

Happy 2014 everyday! What better way to start off the new year than with a Pinfail? I was ready to stop and smell the colorful roses but... well... here's what happened...

This was what I originally saw on Pinterest - seemed easy enough!


Take a rose, cut the stem into four sections, put all for stems into different colored glasses of food coloring, and let the transformation begin!

Sort of.

Not really.

But I started off great! I had my white roses, my food coloring, some glasses, and a pair of scissors to cut the stems.

Do you know how hard it is to cut a stem into fourths? Very, the answer is very hard. Stems don't grow in a straight line, you have to cut with the curve of the stem and sometimes it's not even. But I tried my best and put all four stems in all four glasses.


I also cut some roses in half and put them in two colors and some roses I just snipped off the end completely and put in one color, just to see how they would turn out.

Some instructions I found online said to wait 24 hours, so after cat-proofing the area as best I could, I gave it 24 hours. No change. I waited 48 hours. Still nothing. Well, practically nothing. The roses that were only in one glass tried to change:

I'm sure there are a lot of variables involved such as how often to cut the stems, what kind of roses should one use, should they be in the sun, is it better to cut with a knife vs. scissors, etc. If anyone has successfully dyed roses, I'd love to see the results, as mine are in the trash.

TOTAL COSTS: $9.99 for a dozen white roses

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 48 hours of nothingness

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 1 out of 5
Very easy but a waste of time!

9 comments:

  1. I think this one disappoints me the most. I had such high hopes for rainbow roses.

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    1. As did I... I think Photoshop wins this round :(

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    2. I even tried it with carnations, and it NEVER got to be this bright, ever. Just... kind of muddy, if I used more than one color, and kind of slightly tinted, with one. ::sigh::

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  2. I too saw this on Pinterest and tried it with white carnations and daisies..........I actually had success with both.......the colors turned out very vivid and distinct.......had to use a tremendous amount of food coloring.........a tip that my florist gave me was to leave the flowers out of water for at least 4 hours to get them "thirsty" and also to cut a good portion of the stem off before dividing it

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    1. Thank you for such great tips! That gives me hope to want to try it again!

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    2. My florist told me the same things about letting the flowers get thirsty and then doubling (at least) the amount of coloring. She also said to use hot water instead of cold or room temperature.

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  3. You know, we used to do this in high school to sell the carnations and that was 11 -12 years ago for me. Its possible but you maybe not be using a good food coloring or even strong enough. Depending where you got the flowers from too, they could have pesticides that prevent the color absorption.

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  4. Thanks for sharing your un-rainbow roses with CraftFail! We have your feature scheduled for June 11 - when it's published, you can find it here: http://wp.me/p1sEcb-1Kn

    Thanks again!

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