Pages

Monday, May 2, 2011

Tutorial how to color dye felting wool with KoolAid

A great way to color or dye felting wool is with KoolAid. It comes in a wide variety of colors that could be mixed up to create even more colors. It doesn’t wash away and is as natural as a food coloring could be. Another great thing about KoolAid is that it can be found in any grocery store in US.
citycrochet
I suggest we start with a few bright colors like red for cherry flavored KoolAid, yellow for Lemon and orange for Orange and a few felted beads of medium size. To read more about the process of creating felted wool acorns please refer to my post on How to make felted wool acorns.
felted necklaces
I first made colored water. To make it I added powder from KoolAid packs to the water in a few small plastic containers. As a result I’ve got five containers with brightly colored water. I added approximately a tea spoon of powder to each of the containers. Then I put each of my five beads into a separate container and let the beads suck in the colored water.

One can vary the quantity of powder dispensed in the water to make the solution more or less saturated. As a result beads can turn out of either pale and pastel hues or bright and vivid colors. It makes sense to heat containers with solution and beads in a microwave up to the boiling point for color to fully penetrate the beads. However be careful as beads will be super hot! I usually cool them off in cold water afterwards.
felted items
The result is pretty impressive. All of my five beads turned out to be colored differently. The most intensive, bright and beautiful color turned out to be orange. Yellow bead was not that intensely colored but I really like the light lemon color of the bead. They smell of oranges, lemons and cherries! Yummy!

All those brightly colored beads could be turned into acorns or into an acorn wind chime.
acorns wind chime
This post describes my personal experience with a particular product.
Please be careful trying to replicate the experiment!!!

Tutorial by TonyaUtkina

6 comments:

  1. interesting experiment! How can they drink it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Haha, Nataika! I said the same thing about Kvas while I was in Russia :)

    Also - just a fabulous use for Kool Aid. TFS

    ReplyDelete
  3. tWhat an awesome idea! I can't wait to try it out. This idea definitely helps when you have a minimal amount in your piggy bank. =D

    ReplyDelete