Dye Your Own Mint Jeans

by Christina Dennis

One of the hottest trends for this year is coloured jeans – specifically mint-coloured ones! Jeans are a prefect mommy style essential, and finding the perfect shade of mint jeans can be tricky. Why not buy some inexpensive white ones and dye your own? My good friend Cheryl of Bella’s Boudoir of Jewelry and I did it this spring and it was surprisingly easy. (Those gorgeous legs pictured below are hers!)

 Supplies:

• white jeans (we bought ours for under $25 at Winners)
• turquoise blue fabric dye
• emerald green fabric dye
• salt
• rubber gloves!

Directions:

Prepare your fabric dye according to the package directions. I bought two of each colour of fabric dye, but I only ended up using one of each for two pairs of pants since we wanted such a light mint colour! We followed the package directions for the dye, bringing some water to boil and adding the dye and a little bit of salt. We used a full package of turquoise and half a package of green to make a soft, warm mint green colour.

Mix the dye in a basin of warm water (again, following the directions according to the dye’s manufacturer), and dip your pants in. Make sure you’re wearing gloves for this (my poor friend ended up with nicely dyed green hands!) and that the jeans are submerged fully in the water as quickly as possible. I swirled the pants around in the dye with my gloved hand the entire time (mostly because I was nervous that the dye wasn’t evenly touching all parts of the pants). Our dyes said to submerge the clothing for up to 10 minutes, but I took my jeans out after only 3 minutes and Cheryl only had hers dipped in the dye for less than 15 seconds! We wanted a nice light minty colour, so if your dyes were darker like ours you’ll need to be quick too.

After dying the pants, rinse them really well with warm water. Let them dry completely before wearing them or machine washing them so that the dye will set. My jeans dyed a lot lighter than the shade they appeared in the picture above when wet, and Cheryl’s were lighter still because she didn’t dye them as long. We both washed ours later on the cool cycle in our machine washers and the dye did not fade.

There you have it – a fun project to do with a mommy friend that results in some trendy new jeans for you at a great price!

Christina Dennis is the creator and designer behind Golly Gee Baby, a collection of unique and colourful baby clothing and accessories that are ethically manufactured.