Bleached Polkadot Pants, an easy DIY.

          I should just warn you all that I am on a bit of a dye and bleach binge at the moment. Nothing in my closet is safe! (From my projects, or the unintentional splatter from the process.) I saw this Polka-dot jean D.I.Y over at johansson life in rewind and thought I'd like to try my own version with bleach instead of paint. My dots are not at all perfect, but I still really love how fun these turned out! Don't forget, when working with bleach you have to work fast, or you'll end up with little holes and not cute dots.

1. I grabbed up some teal pants I found at the thrift shop. You could use jeans or colorful shorts, so long as they are mostly cotton there should be no problem bleaching them out.
2. Grab some chalk and a yard stick, if you want your polka dots to be somewhat uniform it is a good idea to mark out a grid, or map out your dots with some chalk or a washable marker. If you want something crazier you could always test your design out in chalk first, maybe try zigzags, stars, lyrics from your favorite song, "I love polka dots", you know, whatever.
3. Once you've stuffed the legs with paper bags or cardboard to avoid your dots bleeding through, grab a bunch of q-tips and a cup of bleach and head outside. Remember, work quick, I worked from the bottom left to right and up the front, putting dots at each intersection in my grid pattern. I then flipped the jeans over, and did the same on the back. Back on front I added more dots in the center of the grids (work bottom to top again), and repeated onto the back. The pants need to go into the wash quickly to stop the bleaching process.
       You can't tell by the pictures, but because the second set of dots  had less time to set, they are a lighter pinky color, where as the first set is pretty much white. I love that I was able to get this effect. If I did this project again I might water down the bleach a bit, so I don't feel like I have to rush through it so quickly. (The more watered down your bleach is, the longer it will take to fade your fabric.)

            Of course my #1 tip is to add tacky holiday pins to make your new polka dotty outfit even more fabulous! I was lucky enough to find an instant Easter collection at my favorite thirft shop this week. Hurray!

Too cute!

Happy Friday Everyone! - Kendra