Words and photos by Hannah Bailey of Tie Dye High Five

Winter approaches and as the darkness creeps in it’s time to embrace the spooky season. It’s time to die…. Dip die that is! Let it creep up on you and transform your jeans into something a little spookier and a lot trendier! Here’s how…

You will need:

Dark on light:

White jeans/trousers

Dylon black velvet/navy blue hand dye

Salt

Tub, bucket, vessel

Protective gloves and old clothing

Light on dark: additional requirements

Black jeans/trousers

Bleach

Another tub, bucket, vessel

Step 1:

Get prepared to DIE! Mwah ha ha ha. Best not to be wearing your glad rags, it’s likely to get a bit messy. We got creative outside with some bin bags down to catch the fallen!

Step 2:

Mix up your dark potion! We went for Dylon Black Velvet combined with Navy Blue. A nice dark combo but with a hint of blue! 250ml of liquid is more than enough: combine half a pack of die powder with 125g of salt (helps drive the die on to the fiber) in 250ml of warm water. You can play around with these quantities to get your desired strength of colour and be sure to check your chosen dies instructions as it may vary.

Step 3:

Fold your nice unsuspecting white jeans and dip the bottoms in the die potion. Get them dunked in, a couple cms below where you want the die to reach, it will crawl further up by its spooky self!

Step 4:

Leave just the bottom hem of your jeans in the potion to soak for a further half hour. It wants to be darker and spookier. To get that creeping effect, rub the die up the jeans with your fingers.

(During this half an hour wait why not get started on the other side, dark on light)

Step 5:

The time to die is over… So take your jeans out the solution and leave to absorb for 30 minutes. Then they are ready to rinse! Take your dyed jeans to the bathtub. Careful enroute not to drip all over the walls and floor (like we did). Rinse out the excess dye with cold water being careful not to splash any run-off on the untouched portion of your white jeans.

Step 6:

Leave to dry… then it is time.. time to get them on!

For bleached bottom, light on dark:

Same as before, however fold and dip into the bleach solution, leaving them in there for 45 minutes. Remove, rinse and ready!

Spookily simple, you now have two pairs of contrasting coloured jeans. Its trick or treat time, so pop you’re creepy crawling dip die’s on! The only tricky bit… deciding which pair to wear?

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