DIY Bleach T-shirts

A few months back I attempted to make a bleach pen and the results were... disastrous, to say the least. I veered away from any projects that involved bleach and t-shirts because I was sure I was just going to screw them up. Well, I came across this post from PracticallyFunctional and this post from Brit.co and thought, "You know what? One Pinterest fail isn't going to stop me!" so I tried these two and you know what? They actually turned out ok! So if you think you're just going to screw it up... trust me, coming from a master failer, you'll be fine.


Bleach Striped T-shirt:

To get started you'll need the following:

1. A t-shirt
2. Some bleach
3. Some water
4. Masking or painter's tape
5. A spray bottle (I just recycled an old one I had on hand)

To begin, start by laying out your shirt and placing your masking or painters tape across the shirt. If you want to use a ruler to get perfect stripes, you can, but I just eye-balled it. Make sure the strips of tape are long enough to wrap around the other side.

Once the shirt is covered in tape stripes, flip it over and continue the lines on the other side with tape.

Try to overlap the tape perfectly, otherwise your lines won't look at seamless.

Next, pour 1 part water and 1 part bleach into a bottle (I did half and half) and place your shirt in a place where you're not afraid to get bleach on it. I opted for the bathtub... figured bleach could only make things better in there! Spray the front, flip it over, and spray the back.

How long you want the bleach to sit is entirely up to you. I opted for 10 minutes but should have done 5 minutes because I got blurred lines (::insert Robin Thicke reference::).

Once your 5-10 minutes are up, remove the tape and rinse the shirt under cold water.

Hang dry for 24 hours before showing off your work! Now aren't you glad you didn't spend $25 on something you could just as easily make yourself? I know it's not perfect but I kinda like it better this way!

Bleach Stencil T-shirt

Now I used this stencil of a cute little owl, cut out all the white parts with an x-acto knife, and taped it to a tank top (if you print out your stencil on transfer paper with spray adhesive, that works too, but I just used card stock and Scotch tape).

Just like before, spray with your 50/50 bleach/water mixture and let it sit for 5-10 minutes.

Rinse it out with cold water and let it air dry for 24 hours before wearing.

Because my owl wasn't completely flush with the shirt, there are some areas around the eyes that didn't turn out as well but overall, I think he's adorable!

A couple things to keep in mind:

#1 - Wherever the bleach water touches, it will stain, even if it's not part of your design (make sure your bottle doesn't leak).

#2 - The longer you wait for the bleach to set, the lighter the color.

#3 - This is a smelly project - wherever you are, you'll smell bleach so please be in a well ventilated room! And yes, the shirts will have a faint smell of bleach when dry so don't be surprised.

Have fun making your shirts your own! Or better yet, make some as gifts for family, for Halloween, for your company softball team... the possibilities are endless!

TOTAL COSTS: About $10
$3 for t-shirt from Goodwill (tank top already on hand)
$5.87 for Frog Tape from Home Depot
$1.79 for bleach from Vons
Bottle already on hand (recycled)

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 20-30 minutes + overnight
15 minutes to make the stripes/cut out the owl
5-10 minutes to spray bleach and let sit
Overnight to dry

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 3 out of 5
To get perfectly straight lines without any bleeding takes practice and you might not get it on the first try (like me) but keep at it and you'll get into a rhythm. If you're using a stencil, make sure it's centered exactly where you want it, otherwise it might look a bit... off.

Can You Dye Pantyhose?

My Aunt showed me this post on how to dye your pantyhose (which would be ideal for Halloween, Cosplay, a number of things!) and asked, "Is this idea cute, inexpensive and fun...or the worst idea ever?" If I had to choose from those four options, I'd definitely choose inexpensive. Colored tights can run you up to $15! Because I read the original instructions wrong, I tried this twice: the first time (red) Kool-Aid and the second time with (green) Jello and food coloring.

I wanted to follow the blogger's exact steps so I bought L'eggs Sheer Energy in Nude and only used 3 packets of Kool-Aid (though I bet two would have been enough).

The Kool-Aid Method:
Start by boiling some water in a medium pot.

Once the bubbles start to form, add your Kool-Aid and stir with a plastic, not wooden, spoon.

Next, add your nylons. Now depending on what color you use, it could take 5 seconds or 5 minutes until the nylons are dyed. With red, it was 5 seconds, but I gave it a full 5 minutes, constantly stirring, so the color would completely saturate the nylons and not leave any splotchy patches. Splotchy is a word, right?

After you're sure the color has set, carefully (since they're hot!) run the nylons under cold water until the water runs clear. As you can see here, there was still pink coming out. It should only take a minute or so.

And hang them up to dry! WARNING: If you dry these on a plastic hanger, make sure there are no snags in the plastic. My hose got caught on a snag and now my new pair has a big hole in them!

The Jello/Food Coloring Method:
Again, start by boiling some water in a medium pot and add your Jello mix (I actually used a whole box of lime).

Next, add your nylons...

And here's the trick - add 10 drops of food coloring. The more, the better.

After an hour, nothing will change, so don't expect immediate results like with the Kool-Aid. I had to wait a good 6 hours (the stove was off, don't worry) before the color finally dyed the nylons!

And just like before, rinse and hang.

Now the color from the Kool-Aid nylons was much more vibrant than the Jello/food coloring nylons, which came off as an olive green. If I had to choose a method, I'd recommend going with the Kool-Aid. It's faster, easier, and the final color is much better, in my opinion.

UPDATE: I washed the red nylons in the washer/dryer with a bunch of other red items (sheets, mainly) and the color didn't change one bit! The photo on the left is "before" and on the right is "after." As long as you wash with similar colors, it doesn't look like it'll fade anytime soon!

TOTAL COSTS: Depends on method
Kool-Aid Method: $5.99 for L'eggs nylons, $1 for 3 Kool-Aid packets
Jello/Food Coloring Method: $5.99 for L'eggs mylons, $1 for Jello, $3.49 for food coloring

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: Depends on method
Kool-Aid Method: 5 minutes to boil water, 5 minutes to soak, 1 minute to rinse, 6 hours to dry
Jello/Food Coloring Method: 10 minutes to boil water, 6 hours to soak, 1 minute to rinse, 6 hours to dry

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 1 out of 5
This is the easiest of peasiest of projects! So whether you're going to a costume party, ComicCon, in a school play, dressing up for Halloween, or are working Hollywood Blvd. this time of year, this is an easy and inexpensive way to add to your wardrobe without the added cost!

Yummy Halloween Treats Involving Chocolate Chips!

Just in time for Halloween, I saw this post by Culinary Adventures in the Kitchen and knew it would be a disgustingly awesome treat to make for Halloween! With a little food coloring and chocolate chips, these can be in your kitchen!

A few things to point out:

#1 - If you don't want to use jelly beans, try using chocolate chips. I personally hate the taste of licorice and the thought of buying an entire bag of jelly beans just so I could use the black ones seemed a bit ludicrous, so I used chocolate chips and they tasted great!

Fingers before putting in the oven

#2 - If you don't have white chocolate around, maybe you'll have white chocolate chips! I poured some into a bowl, put them in the microwave until they were melted (about a minute) and then added the red food coloring for "blood", which leads me to #3...

#3 - The color of your cookies and "blood" may not look exactly like the original post, but they'll still look great, I promise. I added 10 drops of green for the fingers and about 10 drops of red for the blood and while the blood is a bit lighter than I would have liked, it still looks (and tastes) good!

TOTAL COSTS: About $5.50
$2.79 for chocolate chips
$2.79 for white chocolate chips
All other ingredients and food color in house

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: About 50 minutes to make 15-20 fingers
35 minutes to make the dough
11 minutes to bake
5 minutes to let cool and dip in "blood" (though they were still quite warm when I did this)

EASY-PEASY SCALE: 2 out of 5
The most difficult things for me were forming the finger shapes and keeping the consistency of the "blood" as melted as possible (it seemed to solidify when I added the red food coloring so I added a little water). Other than that, piece 'o cake... or... finger...


Shout out to my Aunt Judy for showing me this post on Pinterest from Crafty Texas Girls. Want a healthy snack for your kids this Halloween? Make banana ghosts! Bananas + chocolate chips = scary good. What I wanted to know, though, was how long would they keep if you just left them out at a party?

Here's what they looked like when I first made them:

Here's what they looked like after 1, 2, 3 and 4 hours:
 
The browning really can be seen in the first hour so I wouldn't recommend having these out if you're having an all-day party. Also, the chocolate chips seems to melt a bit after a while.

TOTAL COSTS: About $3.50
$.69/lb of bananas
$2.79 for chocolate chips and you don't need that many!

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 2-3 minutes
Depending on how many ghosts you make, this won't take any time at all!

EASY-PEASY SCALE: 1 out of 5
This only requires 3 steps: peel the banana, cut the banana, add chocolate chips!

My First Blog Requests - Keep 'Em Comin'!

If there is ever something you're curious how long it took to do or how much it might be, shoot them on over and I'll break it down for you Mythbuster-style! Today's spoooooky recommendations came from my former neighbor, Mrs. Martin -

#1 - Glow in the dark eyes

Perhaps you've seen the pictures going around Pinterest or Facebook. Glow lights + paper towel/toilet paper rolls = creepy eyes in the bushes. Does it work?

Well, yes and no. A few things to keep in mind:


     a.) You need to cut the eyes fairly large so you can see the light but not so big that you can see the glow stick
   b.) Depending on how long the glow sticks are, you might have to curl them inside the rolls. For these that were 8" long, I had to fold them so they were 4" long so that the stick wouldn't go outside of the roll. If you hide them in bushes, perhaps the bushes can hide the sticks if they go outside of the rolls, but it might be better to get 4" glow sticks.
     c.) Certain colors work better than others. As you see below, the green shows up the best, then pink, then blue
     d.) Remember to draw your design before cutting. Having a template for the eyes will make it so much easier!

TOTAL COSTS: $3.50 (glow sticks from Vons)
TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: About 15 minutes (to make 3)
EASY-PEASY SCALE: 1 out of 5. A great activity for kids, super easy, and an excuse to be creative!


#2 - "Spooky Teeth"
Here's another that has been making the rounds on Facebook and Pinterest but was also on Cosmopolitan's website. Pretty straight forward - apples, marshmallows, peanut butter. Are they any good?

Yes. Yes yes yes. I don't know why I've never seen marshmallows and peanut butter together but man is it addicting. A recipe I saw called for "1 medium apple, 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter, 25 mini marshmallows" but I did 2 small apples and chunky peanut butter and they tasted ah-may-zing. If you want to make them more like teeth, you can clean them up a bit but I promise you, they won't be on the plate long enough for anyone to care. Great Halloween snack!

TOTAL COSTS: About $9
$2.00 for mini marshmallows, $3.00 for peanut butter, and $4 for 3 lbs. of apples
TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: About 15 minutes
...though some of that time may have been spent eating ingredients...ahem...
EASY-PEASY SCALE: 1 out of 5
If you don't already have an apple slicer/corer like this, I highly recommend you get one. Saves you a lot of time and energy! 

5 Minutes or Less Halloween Ideas

If you just found out you're hosting a Halloween party and you only have 20 minutes to get ready (I don't think that would actually happen but lets pretend, shall we?), here are four 5-minute ideas to get your place ready! And all of this didn't cost me a thing because I already had all the supplies so hopefully you do too!

Mmmm...bloody bandaids....

#1 - The food

Cookies take too long to make and you don't have time to run to the store. What do you do? Grab some ingredients out of your cupboards and fridge and make these Band-Aid Appetizers from Likes.com.

INGREDIENTS: Graham crackers, cream cheese, and jelly
TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 4 minutes, 45 seconds to make 9.
Notice that I didn't flatten out the cream cheese and make it square but if you get your kids to make these, they probably won't either!
EASY-PEASY SCALE: 1 out of 5. They're so easy to make and they'd be a fun project for the kiddos! Now whether they taste any good... well... that's up to your taste buds.

#2 - The mood

Pumpkin silhouette

So you don't have any fake cobwebs laying around? No zombies? That's ok, you can still make your space spooky! Cut out black paper, or print on black ink and cut out, different designs like jack o'lantern faces or bats! If you want to be really fancy, you could cut out one of these templates from Martha Stewart but it would take more than 5 minutes. Anyone else wish there was a face of Martha Stewart template to cut out? Maybe I'd only be spooked by that...

Bat silhouette

SUPPLIES NEEDED: Paper, scissors, tape (I recommend double-sided but if you don't have any, just make loops) and tape to the front of the design and the inside of the lampshade. Remember not to show the tape outside of the design or it will show through!
TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 4 minutes, 25 seconds
2 minutes, 25 seconds for the bat, 1 minute 30 seconds for the jack o'lantern, and 1 minute to tape them inside of lampshades
EASY-PEASY SCALE: 2 out of 5. It depends on how difficult of a design you're cutting out but again, something the kids could do and looks great! Just remember not to have paper too close to the hot lightbulb or you might have another kind of scary night!

#3 - The oooed (just go with it)

Mummy

What if the electricity has gone out? Well, put those candles to good use! This post from Thrifty Decor brings to "light" two different ideas and they're super quick and easy!

Creepy eyes

SUPPLIES NEEDED: For the mummy: Gauze or cheesecloth, googly eyes (I used Wilton Candy Eyeballs but you could easily cut eyes out of paper), candle, mason jar, glue. For creepy eyes: dark paper, scissors, tape, marker, hole puncher, candle, and candle holder
TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 2 minutes, 25 seconds for the mummy and 2 minutes, 30 seconds for the creepy eyes
EASY-PEASY SCALE: 2 out of 5. Again, very easy and very quick to put together. I didn't even tape the gauze for the mummy, I just tucked it in in the back and I didn't glue the eyes on but you certainly can. And while the original creepy eyes calls for strips of paper with eyes cut out, I opted for one sheet of paper wrapped around the candle holder to save on time, taped the paper to the holder, then punched out eye holes. I probably should have drawn the pupils bigger, though.

Tissue ghosts

#4 - The booed

I used to make these as a kid and when I saw this post, I was so happy to see Jen Banks at A Busy Mommy does it for her kids as well! This is probably my favorite but for sentimental reasons.

SUPPLIES NEEDED: Tissues, string or yarn (I used black thread which is harder to see from far away), and a marker
TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 1 minute per ghost (I made three), and 30 seconds to hang per ghost...unless you have a really difficult chandelier
EASY-PEASY SCALE: 1 out of 5. As I said, I used to make these as a kid so they're really easy to make. The most tissue ghosts, the better!

Happy Halloween!

Spider Cookies

As we near Halloween, we look for easy and fun sweets to devour... ok, maybe that's just me. I already had bloody cupcakes, I destroyed some pumpkin cake, and when I came upon this post from Bubblews, I knew I had to make these. Seemed easy enough... chocolate chips = spiders = cool looking (and tasty!) cookies for Halloween.

Looks can be deceiving.

Here's what I did and what I recommend you NOT do:

Take #1 - I first tried with a pre-made package of cookie dough. You know, those packs you can buy that have the dough all cut up for you and you just have to put them on a cookie sheet and stick in the oven? Well, when I took them out of the oven, the chocolate chips were so hard I ended up putting destroying them. Mangling them. I practically put holes in the cookies! "Ok," I thought, "maybe it's just because it's not from scratch." So I ate all the cookies I made and tried again.

Take 1: Pre-made cookie dough = holes

Take #2 - I made a batch of cookies from scratch (I just used the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip cookie bag) and as soon as they were out of the oven, I grabbed my toothpick and tried making legs. Same problem! I ended up swirling the chocolate chip to loosen it up and draw the legs from there but as you can see, it didn't look like the original post AND it took forever just to get one done:

Take 2: Crabs or spiders?

Original cookie in the post. Yeah. Right.

Take #3 - I thought, "Ok, maybe if I make sure there's no cookie dough on top of the chocolate chips and I put two chips together to make for more melted chocolate to work with." Nope, no change. I even considered using a paintbrush instead of a toothpick but the original post specifically says you can use a toothpick.

And then I realized. Whoever originally posted the article... never... even... tried it. Their specific wording states, "It apparently, should turn out like the picture above." It apparently, does not.

I recommend you give this a try and let me know how it goes. Best case scenario? You have awesome looking cookies. Worst case scenario? You have to eat all those cookies you just made (though it sounds like two best case scenarios to me!)

TOTAL COSTS: $2.59

$2.59 for a pack of pre-made packages of cookie dough from Vons

All other ingredients I already had, including toothpicks

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: About 30 minutes

Unless you decide to make 3 or 4 batches, just account for 15 minutes to mix the ingredients and 10-12 minutes in the oven per batch

EASY-PEASY SCALE: 4 out of 5

While it's not hard to take a toothpick to a cookie, it is difficult to make the spiders look realistic. Perhaps the legs should have been longer. Perhaps an up-and-down process is better than left-to-right. Perhaps you really do need to use a small paintbrush instead of a toothpick. In any case, the moral of the story is: don't believe everything you see on the internet.

Holiday Soaps

I wanted to do a project that would a.) get men/boys interested and b.) stick with the Halloween theme. After seeing this post by Jourdan Crouch Fairchild on CountryLiving's website, I figured I'd run to Michael's and give it a try. I've never made soap before but it can't be that hard, right? And if I add some creepy crawlers inside the soap, how cool would that be??

First off, I had no idea there are so many different kinds of soaps you could buy! And honestly, I picked the Higher Temperature Glycerin Soap primarily because of the price (it was the cheapest for the amount provided - $11.99 for 2lbs. or 8 soaps total). As to whether or not that was the best choice, we shall see.

Next, I knew I needed to put the melted soap into some sort of a mold. "How many should I get?" I asked my husband, who was a saint for being there in the first place but definitely wasn't interested. I went with a pack of 3 by the same company (ArtMinds), figuring that'd be a good place to start. I can always reuse them. Too bad only 2 out of the 3 survived (more on that later).

Ok, so we've got soap, we've got molds, now we need something to go in the soap, like plastic insects or spiders. Note: Michael's does NOT have any small plastic bugs in bulk, except for a tube of 9-10 insects (most over 3") for $8.99. Yeah. I don't think so. So I decided to use some plastic spider rings that I received as a Halloween grab bag gift and cut off the "ring" part.

Lastly, a fragrance for the soap. I didn't know what glycerin soap smelled like but I knew I'd want to cover it up. Now what smells like spiders? Mint seemed like the best choice. Don't question, just go with it.

Onto the soap making! Ok instructions, tell me what to do:

That's it? Ok, but how much do I cut? What do I do after it has cooled? What about bubbles? I had to make up the answers to these questions, because the instructions were definitely lacking.

SUPPLIES YOU'LL NEED THAT THEY DON'T MENTION:

Gloves

Knife

Cutting board

Microwave safe bowl or measuring cup to put soap in

Something to stir soap with (I used a plastic knife so I could throw it away later)

Fun toy to put in soap
Oven mitts

Step 1 - Put on gloves and cut the soap. I didn't wear gloves and my hands smell something awful. Turns out 4 squares = 1 mold, so I cut up 12 squares (since I had 3 molds). 

Step 2 - put 4 squares in microwave safe bowl or measuring cup and put in microwave (I used a bowl and it spilled a lot, so you might want to go with a measuring cup). I put it on high for 30 seconds, stirred the contents, put back in the microwave for 15 seconds, stirred, then 15 more seconds in the microwave. One of my tries, the soap was still hard so I put it in for another 15 seconds. Just keep adding 10-15 seconds until it's all melted. Once it was all liquid, I added 6 drops of Mint soap fragrance and stirred it up with a plastic knife.

Step 3 - Be very careful with this next step. Wearing oven mitts (because the bowl/measuring cup will be HOT), pour the bowl/cup of melted soap halfway into the mold, put in your toy, and pour in the rest. Now the spiders I used were too light so they floated to the top/bottom of the soap.

One thing I didn't think of until it was too late was the bubbles. Try and remove those as soon as you've poured the soap into the mold, otherwise you'll have bubbles in your soap. Not a big deal but something to think about. You should be able to scrape them out with a knife.

Bubbles in the corner of my mold I forgot to remove

Step 4 - Set aside mold for 1 hour

Step 5 - Immediately clean up your work area (or the microwave), in case you spilled any soap.

Once the hour is up, removing the soap from the mold is the most frustrating step. The first mold, I swore a lot, took out a pair of scissors, and hacked the mold to pieces. Ahem. The second mold, I regained my composure and tried to separate the sides first, before pushing out the soap from the mold. That seemed to have done the trick! I even tried out one of the soaps and by golly, it works! Whichever soaps you're not using, be sure to wrap in clear plastic wrap to preserve the freshness of the soap bar. Another thing they forget to tell you in the instructions :-/

And remember, if you do add a toy, put it in the center of the mold and try to remove the bubbles or it's going to look foggy, like this -

Swimming in a sea of soap and bubbles

TOTAL COSTS: About $20

$11.99 at Michael's for 2lbs of ArtMinds Higher Temperature Glycerin Soap

$2.99 at Michaels for 3 ArtMinds Embossing Soap Molds

$4.99 for ArtMinds Mint Soap Fragrance (.05 fl oz)

Spiders were free

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 1 hour, 11 minutes

3 minutes to cut 12 squares of soap

1 minute/soap mold in microwave (and I did 3)

1 hour to wait for soap to cool

5 minutes to remove soaps from their molds

EASY-PEASY SCALE: 3 out of 5

Not super hard, just need some nails and upper-body strength to remove the soap from the molds!