Being able to modify your clothes with paint wasn’t possibly something one would’ve imagined a few years back. Thanks to the innovation that makes tie-dying with acrylic paint create a similar or deeper effect than normal dye.
Can You Tie Dye with Acrylic Paint?
You can tie-dye with acrylic paint and you will get better results with regular dyes when combining dyes with acrylic paint. The color will be more vivid and will not fade after washing.
Seeing your clothing unique and dazzling is one of the results you get when you tie-dye with acrylic paint. This process also provides opportunities to have access to a wide range of shades of color. Interestingly, tying dye to acrylic paint is fun.
You won’t have to invest so much or hire the service of a professional artist. A simple DIY procedure will get your dyed clothing tied with acrylic paint.
Step-by-Step Guide to Tie Dye with Acrylic Paint
With this method, you can tie-dye with acrylic paint. The procedure is pretty affordable and you can get some of the materials required at your local store.
Materials need:
- Plastic squeeze/spray/pour bottles
- Faint fabric/textile medium
- Rubber bands
- Smocks and containers
- Article of clothing to dye
- Acrylic paints
As much as possible, avoid getting the workspace messed up with dye or paint. To achieve this, cover the tabletops with plastic tablecloths; put on lab coats and rubber gloves.
Step 1: Mix the Components (water+fabric medium+paint)
Measure and prepare the acrylic paint. Add water and a faint textile medium. The purpose of the fabric medium is to help the paint soften up a bit. This will prevent the clothing from becoming stiff when it gets dry. Add 1 bottle of acrylic paint and half a bottle of a textile medium into the plastic squeeze bottles. Add three times of water to fill up the acrylic bottle. Shake the mixture vigorously
Step 2: Choose the Colors
The great news is that acrylic paint is suitable for a wide range of color and color shades. At this level, you should select the colors for your shirt. After this, you can repeat the process you’re your chosen colors.
Step 3: Tie-dye the Fabric
After getting things ready, it is time to tie-dye with acrylic paint. The first thing to do is to mist the article of clothing by spraying it with water, using the spray bottle. Wear the rubber bands and hold the tip of the fabric to avoid squirting. After this, you should spray with color so that the color can go around the fabric. To get a great visual effect, use as many as two or three colors. Do not allow too much paint in one area; rather; let the paint spread across the fabric.
Step 4: Spread Dyed Fabric on Tablecloths
After dying the fabric, place it on plastic trays to be absorbed in the colors. Take off the rubber bands after an hour to hold up the fabric.
Step 5: Iron the Dyed Clothing
Finally, if you wish to heat set the clothing after air-drying the pain, you can make use of your pressing iron and ironing board. Alternatively, a dryer will create the same smooth effect. The color of the fabric after tie-dying comes out bolder and the clothing won’t fade easily due to washing.
Tie Dye With Acrylic Paint by Jamela Payne
Today I am going to show you how to tie-dye a shirt using just acrylics. I got this awesome box of acrylics from plaid and, I was like, what am I going to do with so many colors? So I decided to use them for tie-dye, and it doesn’t dry hard with this method.
Don’t throw in the dryer
I did a lot of research, and I couldn’t find a whole lot on the entire process. The only thing that I did that I would not suggest is throwing it in the dryer to dry it quicker.
Supplies
Usually, the first thing you’re going to do is grab your supplies. I used a canvas shirt, and I got these little containers from Walmart. They’re just like personal care containers. I used a cookie rack and a disposable container to set my shirt on. I used tweezers to spiral my shirt, but probably I will do this again, and I will use something different or a different method for my tie-dye.
Mixing the colors
You know the best spiral, but this was, you know, kind of a trial run of this method using the acrylics to tie-dye. The next step we do after wrapping our shirt is mixing our vegetable glycerin.
I mixed five parts water to one part glycerin, and it seemed to work out pretty well, and that’s what you see me doing here.
Now we’re going to mix our colors. I chose four colors; you can choose however many you want to, and all I did was a little. I squirted some in the bottle if I had to guess, I had to say about two tablespoons, and I mixed with equal parts of the water glycerin mix. I didn’t mix more because I wanted my colors to be bright and vibrant, and the more water you put, or the more of the water mixture you put in there, the more diluted your colors are. So for bright, vibrant colors, you want it. Do you want it runny enough for it to saturate your shirt, but you don’t want it to dilute it?
Glycerin makes the paint isn’t hard
Hopefully, that makes sense, so I just did a one-to-one ratio for my bottles the way I wanted them. I grabbed my little medicine dropper, and I dropped in about two tablespoons of the water glycerin mix to thin the colors out.
The glycerin is supposed to make it so that the paint isn’t challenging when it dries, which worked out very well.
You want to make sure to apply the lids tightly and shake them all up to mix the pan and your rack, and then go ahead and put the rack over top of the pan. That way, your shirt is not sitting in the color as you apply it shirt on top of the rack and grab your spray bottle, and you want to dampen it.
I guess you could do this under the sink, but you don’t want it to be saturated. Do you want it to be damp enough for the colors to kind of bleed through the cotton after you’ve dampened it to your satisfaction?
Pouring the colors onto the white fabric
You can go in and tie-dye like normal with the colors you just made up going to tie-dye like usual. You’re just going to use the colors and pour it onto the white fabric, and you want to pour enough that it saturates. This yellow was still a little thick, but it still did not dry hard. It could have used a little bit more of the glycerin mixture, but it still turned out well to stick around to the end for the final result, so this is where I got impatient.
Getting dry
I stuck mine in the dryer, and here you see me cutting off the rubber bands to see how it turned out. It still turned out pretty good. You know, using acrylic paints for tie-dye, but you can also see where it bled some little it’s led a little, I think it’s still really cool especially the bottom, but you can see in some places where it got a little bit muddy. But all in all, I am pretty satisfied with the way it turned out.
I will do this again and try some different methods of getting it dry so that I don’t stick it in the dryer and get color all over my dryer or end up with muddy colors. In the end, I’ll probably water it down a little bit more, but this is after I pressed it.
