Wednesday, September 5, 2012

inkodye a stain

Nicki stopped by with a stained shirt and an hour before she had to go to work to stain another shirt at the restaurant. She hates pink and doesn't know why she bought the shirt in the first place but came to the conclusion that she should just dye it and solve the stain and pink problem in one shot. 
I suggested we experiment.
I pulled out Inkodye and printed out the Nirvana smiley face. Inkodye is a light sense dye that's definitely a lot more fun (and experimental) than just straight up RIT dyeing. Because Inkodye can be used with a "resist", we thought it could be an interesting way to create a one-off band shirt... fast.
 I taped the Nirvana face to a piece of black card stock and cut it out with a craft knife. After placing a board in the inside of the shirt and taping it in place, I rolled the inkodye on the shirt with a foam roller, not being too concerned with it being perfect—like I said, we were doing this fast.
 Once a thin layer of the dye was applied in a square on the front of the tee, I placed the cut-out face over it.
 We carried it outside and placed a piece of glass over the cut-out to keep it flat on the shirt. We sat there for about 15 minutes in the sun and...
 ...slowly the area where I painted the ink started to turn blue!!
 We ran the shirt inside, removed the paper and after rinsing the dye out of the shirt, we hung it to dry. Nicki's new experimental band shirt was the result!
Much more interesting than an oil stained pink shirt.