The Frugal Farm Living life deliberately

For my daughter's eighth birthday in May I ordered some silks from Dharma Trading Company and dyed them up with Kool-aid and food coloring. They were such a big hit that I dyed more the my 11 year-old's birthday last week. My soon-to-be six-year-old is really hoping she gets some for her birthday coming up in September. (Lucky for her, I ordered the silks at the same time!) The girls use them as skirts and shawls and wave them around while they dance.

Dyeing with Kool-aid is really easy and food-safe, so you don't have to worry about using separate pots and pans and containers. I googled the topic and read several blog posts and tutorials about it before I got started and the whole process only takes an hour or so. My rainbow, in order of Kool-aid flavors, is tropical punch, orange, lemonade, lemon-lime, berry blue, Wilton's violet icing color (the paste, not drops), and strawberri-kiwi. Grape kool-aid makes a grayish color instead of a vibrant purple so I used a dab of icing paste color for the purple. The purple separates into blue and red and made for a really pretty silk. (The Crock Pot has nothing to do with the dye, it was just our dinner cooking.)

The red was really hard to rinse out so next time I will try and remember to use less Kool-aid.

Last night I discovered a blue playsilk was a backdrop for a Polly Pocket beach scene. That is exactly the kind of creative play I was going for when I made them.