Ok, what is the crystal method. I am going to
walmart tomorrow to get the items I need to do these shirts.
The crystal method is where you sprinkle the dry dye onto the shirts instead of using liquid dye. The look is supposed to be more like water (if using blues) or stone/granite (if using brown/orange/red) or just a nice random pattern of colors.
See the shirts I posted about 5-10 pages prior for 2008 and the instructions for the shirts I made in 2007 (same method, just different color shirts) on pages 17-20.
Here's a recap:
Use 100% cotton shirts only.
Buy dye in some colors that you like. I bought my dyes from Dharma Trading since they had the better dyes (more vibrant colors) and more choices of colors. I bought their basic tie dye kit which included the soda ash and then added 2-3 additional colors.
Draw a Mickey head (or other character) on the shirt using pencil and then do a baste stitch (simple 1/2" up and down) using dental floss. Knot off.
Soak the shirts in soda ash solution if you desire (this will help the dye to stick better.
Pull the floss together tightly so the material with in the stitching (ie, the Mickey head) pokes up, dye the Mickey Head (dip in liquid dye or squeeze dye onto it), and then seal the Mickey head in a ziploc bag with more rubber bands so no dye or water can get in.
Bunch the rest of the shirt in a LOOSE bundle like a pie and tie off with rubber bands. We used about 3-4 per shirt. Keep the Mickey heads poking up since you don't want to dye these anymore but they should be protected by the ziploc bags.
If you didn't soak shirts earlier, do so now (keep ziploc bags on) with plain water.
Once wet, then you squeeze the excess water out but they still need to be wet.
Put the shirt in a bucket and then sprinkle the DRY dye on top (use 2-3 colors) then put the wet soda ash on top, just enough to make the dye wet. Then you can either add more colors and put some more soda ash on (just to make wet, not a lot at all). Then you flip over and do the other side. Once done, put in plastic bag and wait 24 hours. The instructions I saw said you can use 5-7 colors
We used turquoise, baby blue, lilac and peacock blue...plus fushia red for the Mickey head for the light blue shirts (2007). And added yellow for the darker shirts (2008).
The end result is supposed to look like water (if you do blues) or granite stone (if you do browns/orange/reds) or crystals (multiple colors would work), depending on the colors you use.
I got my dyes from Dharma Trading Company, since they had over 65 colors to choose from...
This past time we did not use the extra soda ash solution when dying...we just soaked the shirts in it for 20 minutes, squeezed excess water our and went straight to sprinkling the dry dye on the shirts.
Our 2008 shirts also had the Mickey Swirl on them: here are those instructions:
Once the shirts have soaked overnight for 24 hours, then lie flat on a table and take a Bleach Gel Pen and make a mickey swirl.
We waited about 3 hours afterwards before rinsing and that was too long. Our bleach spread too much. Next time we'll probably only wait 20-60 minutes.
Rinse the shirts well and then wash in the washing machine.
We washed with a synthrapol solution to help "set" the dyes (came in the Dharma Trading kit).
(but then I'm partial to that instead of the twist...)
