Dip Dyed Shorts

In honor of Independence Day, I decided a good, timeless, Summer project was on the menu for today. So here is an easy way to update those old jeans you haven't worn in awhile.

Supplies:

old jeans

bleach

scissors

plastic cooler

string

Try your jeans on and mark them with a pen how short you want your shorts. It's important to try them on from past experiences where I've cut too high and wound up with booty shorts.

Now you have a new pair of shorts.

I rigged this up because I knew I didn't want to inhale bleach fumes for the next hour.  I'm sure there are many other ways to do this, but this was pretty easy to me.  I used a cooler and flipped up the handle, then slid my string through each belt loop and tied it to the handle so just the portion I wanted bleached would end up in the cooler.

Fill up your cooler with warm water (don't know if it makes a difference the water temperature, but I used warm and it worked so let's just go with that.) I used about 2 parts water, to 1 part bleach.  Have the solution touching about an inch up your shorts (the bleach will bleed up a little).

Check on them every 20 minutes or so until you get the color you want.  I left mine in there for about an hour. I should probably mention to wear bad clothes when doing this incase the bleach gets on them.

Hang to dry...

Then wash them on cold the first few times you wash them.

Happy 4th of July!

--Emily Jo