I killed a clown. Or at least that is what I tell people when they see my hands. I am pretty sure that clowns bleed a rainbow of colors, because clowns aren't humans. They are space aliens trying to infiltrate our planet. That might not be a true story, but so far I have had no arguments about clowns.
Once a month, I get together with my girlfriends and we do something, anything. We make an adventure out of it, because one cannot have too many adventures in this life. It was decided that it would be fun to do a little bit of tie dyeing. I personally don’t remember the last time I did any sort of tie dyeing. It had to be at least a dozen years if not two decades since I have had any sort of association with tie dye. I now know why. It doesn’t matter how much you try not to get any on you, it is still going to happen. The gloves they include in any of the kits are a joke. They tear easily and made for giant hands, so there are all sorts of gaps for dye to seep into, especially if you have any sort of enthusiasm for the project. You get a group of girls together with some sangria and bottles of dye, and things can get pretty interesting and enthusiasm was not lacking. It was an adventure that has certainly proved to be a learning experience.
We tie dyed the following: 2 Dresses, 10 Tee Shirts, 3 Pairs of Socks, Various Undergarments, 1 Beds Sheet set, Yoga Shorts, Towel Set, Hoody, Fedoras, Ball caps, 3 Dress Shirts, Bandana’s, 5 pairs of feet, 5 sets of hands, 3 legs, 2 arms and 1 forehead. I am sure that there is more that was dyed and I am just forgetting it, because I may have ingested some dye at one point or another. There was a lot of dye flowing around and, since there were five of us, and five pairs hands and 5 sets of feet were dyed, you can guess that I got dyed.
It was fun, until I tried to get it off, and then I learned that the Internet is a liar. Here is a list of things that I have tried thus far to remove the techno-colored from my hands. Please note that none of these things actually worked.
1. Acetone- It removes nail polish, and has been said to help remove hair dye from furniture. This is did not work in the slightest. Having now had the experience of rinsing my hands in acetone, I can attest to this. Acetone is cold. It is creepy and it feels like your life is seeping out of your hands, but it did nothing to remove the dye. It didn’t even make it fade either. I would not recommend trying this method, unless you want to know what it is like to shake the cold clammy hand of death.
2. Orange Cleaner- I had high hopes for this. It is supposed to be able to clean anything. It doesn’t. The gritty texture and the strong smell of oranges, was kind of pleasant after shaking the cold hand of death with Acetone. However, with the exfoliation and the determined scrubbing and rubbing the solution together, it did nothing to lighten the coloration of my hands. On the bright side my hands felt smooth from the exfoliation and every crack and crevice in my hand was highlighted even more in the stubborn dye.
3. Baking soda and Dish Soap- This is form a dye removal website. I am not going to mention the website, because I think they are using hair dye, and any cure for hair dye does not apply to tee shirt dye. I thought it would be worth a try since I had both items in my home. Mixing dish soap and baking soda is weird. It makes a paste that almost feels like play dough. Rubbing it onto my hands was sort of like trying to wash in slightly blue cookie batter. The baking soda continued to smooth my hands even more. It felt kind of nice, but did nothing for the dye. The dye was stubborn.
4. Toothpaste- This is probably the weirdest home remedy that I saw, but in its own way it made sense. Tooth paste is whitening and used to remove stains on teeth. In theory it could possibly remove stains from a person’s hands. In theory it works. The act of covering my hands in tooth paste, I don’t think I will ever forget. I learned that when you cover your hands in tooth paste, they start to tingle because of the mint in the paste. The longer you keep the paste on, the more it tingles. After you wash the paste off , your hands will smell like mint for the rest of the evening. Despite the tingling, and the minty smell, my hands did not seem any less tie dyed.
After about four attempts and a shower later to remove the dye, I decided to just go to bed. It was like magic; once I fell asleep I completely came to peace with myself and my new skin colors. Waking up in the morning I gave up on changing the color of my hands, and decided to compliment my new and improved color pallet by painting my finger nails a rather fetching pink. Then the real miracle happened, while I worked throughout the day, the color just seemed to come off of my hands and lighten and fade. It was amazing. By the end of the work day, I no longer looked like I murdered a clown or strangled a rainbow. I would say that the moral of the story is that sometime it is easy to get distracted by the small things in life and if you just keep moving those small things sort themselves out, sort of like tie dye.