Fabric Tea Dying

Have I mentioned that I am in LOVE with the new Springtime Vintage Fabric & the Fun Flowers Die for the Big Shot?  I knew I wanted to make something special for my 2 year old's Dance Class for Valentine's Day...so I decided to make the girls little flower hair barettes...

I love the soft florals and shabby chic-eness of this fabric, so I thought it would be a perfect candidate to try some Tea Staining! What I love about tea staining, is that it is a cheap n' easy technique...the best kind!  It's definately not brain surgery, but I've put together a little step-by-step tutorial for you today..

First, get a pot of water boiling so you can make your tea...that kettle in the background probably would have worked too! (duh)

The research I did said to use two tea bags for white or off white fabric...since we have some florals and some color going on with these prints, I decided to turn it up a notch and do three (I know, I'm a rebel)

Pour your boiling water into your bowl of tea bags and let steep for about 10 minutes...longer if you want it darker. You can see from my pic above that it ended up being a rich, medium brown color. (note: I took OUT the bags before putting in my fabric...I've read that you can leave them in--put them on top of the fabric--which will create a more varigated look to the staining)

Let your fabric and tea sit for another 10 minutes or so...

Pull out your fabric and put it in a colander in the sink to drainit. Then, you can either throw your fabric in the dryer....

..or leave them to hang dry in your kitchen like I did!

Next, put your DRY fabic on your die and Big Shot away! The dies fit quite nicely on the fabric, just by cutting on the fold lines that the fabric has from being in the box it comes in! The piece above is 7 in x 18 in and can fit the die twice. Run it through your Big Shot...

And you'll wind up with is a bunch of pretty die cut flowers. Lay them out and give them a quick spray of Spray Starch.

This is what I used (got it at Wegmans)

Now here's the fun part...crumple the paper (flowers and all) into a tight ball. Really mash it together...it will give your fabric a nice worn, crinkley, aged look!

Lay out your flowers one more time to have them dry completely.

All you do next is layer each petal (I worked largest to smallest) and put a dab of hot glue between each layer. It's amazing the color variations you can get using the same fabric, just by the way you "stack" your flowers.  Here's the finished product..

The one on the left was tea stained and the one on the right was not. Makes a difference, huh? I think I actually prefer the tea stained one. Oh, I guess I should mention that I also hot glued a hair clip (from my local craft store) underneith each one. Let me show you how it looks when you wear on...

Meet Elizabeth, Dancer & "Hair Model"

You can see in this picture that I added a Springtime Vingtage Big Button and a little Vanilla Seam Binding to make it even more girly.

And, of course, I couldn't stop there..

I also picked up a steely grey colored satin headband at the craft store (with a coupon, it was less than $2.00) and put a flower on that too...

And here we go...

I think I will be making many more of these in the near future...so easy and fun! Wait until you see how I package these up for my little dancers for Valentine's Day...