Making Dye

I am going to admit it, I want to be showered with petals as Nathan and I walk down the aisle after we are married. I have been trying to figure out a feasable way to make this happen, and I am thinking about making paper cones. I figured since I have all sorts of the Crate and Barrel packing paper this might be another good place for a reuse project.

I want, however, to not have the paper be the boring whitish color it is, but to fit into the wedding. After not using the beet dye I made soon enough at Christmas I decided to try again with the natural dyes.

I found an online site that told me that using red onion skins would make a nice green dye and red cabbage will be purple. So far I have only tried the red onion and I am sad to report that is was disaturous. First, the water seemed to boil out too quickly, and I had to add more water whick I know diluted the color. Second, and more importantly, the color was not green, but rather a brownish yellow.

I will try again with the cabbage and report back.

Christy's Gift

Around Christmas I dyed some of the paper that was used to pad a few Crate and Barrel items we received as engagement gifts. I had one piece left that I used to wrap Christy's birthday gift.

To dye the paper I accordion folded it in about 1 inch strips. I then made a bath of red food coloring and water and dipped it in. The dye then got trapped in the folds and created a neat striped effect.

The difficult part was undoing the paper as it ripped fairly easily. I found that if I put the paper in the oven on low for a few minutes it helped to dry it enough that it was easier to unfold.

For Christy's gift I used a pretty red ribbon to compliment the paper, and then folded the ends to create a flat and more sophisticated bow. I finished it off by using a boutonniere pin to attach the little label.

Hello

I'm getting married and it turns out that all of our gifts are mailed in a lot of extra packaging. I am challenging myself to reuse as much of the extra packaging as possible and I will post about it here.