Flower brooch hand dyed in burgundy

I keep experimenting with hand dyeing. It's such a rewarding and inspiring process. So many new ideas come to life when one starts mixing colors. The end result is always a surprise and the whole process is much fun!

I hand felted many many wool petals for my flower brooches and dyed them in my freshest color mix. The final dye color is more like a burgundy with hints of red and even yellow. It's such an interesting color that is not eye popping bright but rather stylish and elegant.

I've assembled my petals into a flower brooch with a hand crocheted jute base that I had made earlier. The brooch looks like a flower and will no doubt decorate any outfit. It will go well with any office neutral colors especially the ones with hues of light green, dusty pink and pale blue.

How to dye in green with blue and yellow drink mixes

Since I bought Kool Aid brink mix in blue raspberry I now have all prime colors I need for dyeing. I am eager to start experimenting with mixing different colors and creating new ones. My first experiment will be in mixing a bright green color. We will need one pack of yellow drink mix. For that we can use lemon Kool Aid. In addition we will need a blue drink mix and blue raspberry Kool Aid works just fine.

I mix both drinks in a plastic container. It makes sense to first make a yellow mix and start slowly adding blue drink mix into the container with yellow water. Keep stirring for colors to mix well. I suggest you do it slowly so that you can control the hue of green and stop when you think the color of the mix is the one you are looking for. I've noticed that for a pack of yellow mix I used about 2/3 the blue one.

I dyed my hand felted white wool pieces in the mixture of two drinks and got brightly colored green stripes.
Now it's time to turn them into something nice and beautiful. I assembled white and green pieces of wool on a base that I hand crocheted from jute earlier. The green color turned out to be even better than I've expected. It's a true positive and happy green. The brooch is bright and vivid making it a great accessory.

How to color with green lime drink mix dye

I've been looking for a green drink mix for a long time and finally found it! Unfortunately Kool Aid doesn't come in green. If it did it would make out life so much easier!!! I came across this lime green drink mix in our local super market and decided to try it out. It worked out pretty well!

To dye wool with the green drink mix I took two cups of the mix and mixed it with half a glass of water. The water turned the color of the bottle label. That was exactly the color I was searching for a long time. It's the color of lime, lettuce and fresh spring greens.

I hand felted a piece of white wool using soap and hot water. To learn about hand felting techniques please refer to my earlier post about hand felting. While still wet I placed my felted piece into a plastic container with the green drink mix and heated it in a microwave. Be careful not to overheat the wool as it can get burned. Normally I'll just wait for the whole thing to start boiling and take it out of the microwave. Then I let the piece dry somewhere.

When all my pieces of wool are dry it's time to turn them into something wearable. To create my brooch I first hand felted white wool, dark green wool and wine colored bead. Then I hand crocheted the base and colored white wool with the lime green drink mix. When all the pieces were dry and ready to use I assembled the brooch and attached a pin at the back. The lime colored wool looks beautiful and bright. I'm now anxious to hand felt a scarf and color it green!

How to color wool with KoolAid

A few of my friends recently told me that they are experimenting with different artificial colorings easily available in grocery stores. What we all are looking for is a coloring that would be inexpensive, reliable and not too harmful. The new favorite in the felting community is KoolAid that could be found in any grocery store in US. I bought a few small packs of different colors to try it out.

To experiment with KoolAid coloring we will need to create wool felted beads first. To read about how to create ones you can go to my previous post on how to create wool acorns.

To make colored water I added powder from KoolAid packs to water in a few small plastic containers. As a result I got five containers with brightly colored water. I added approximately a tea spoon of powder to every container. Then I put each of my five beads into a separate container and let the beads suck in the colored water.

It makes sense to heat containers with water and beads in a microwave for color to fully penetrate the beads. I microwaved my containers for approximately 3 minutes. I didn't want to boil my beads but might experiment with boiling next time.

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. The cherry color turned out to be very intense and vivid as well. In general all the beads have vivid and bright colors as a result of coloring. They smell of oranges, lemons and cherries!
It's definitely worth experimenting with this powder as theoretically one could mix different colors and get some interesting results. My only advice is to wear rubber gloves as it will be very hard to get the color off your hands once it gets there!

This post describes my personal experience with a particular product.
Please be careful trying to replicate the experiment!!!