Made It Monday- Dye-colored Clothespins!

This is my first Made-It Monday post!  After reading everyone's fabulous Made It Monday posts, I'm happy to finally join in on the fun!  I'm linked up with Tara from 4th Grade Frolics.

I've been spending the past 2 weeks gathering supplies, printing and laminating everything, and trying to pack everything in suitcases before I head out to China.  When am I leaving you ask? I'm patiently waiting for my visa to go through but I am hoping and praying that I will leave by the first week of August.

So I I found this idea on how to make colored clothespins from Buzzfeed. There wasn't any good tutorial I found, so I decided to test it out myself.

I went to Walmart to see what RIT dyes they had.  They sell liquid and powder versions.  I went with the liquid version because I wasn't sure how well the dye would stain the wood.  Each bottle was roughly around $2.80 each.  The colors I got were dark green, yellow, red, royal blue, and purple.  If you don't want to spend a lot of money, I would suggest getting the primary colors because you can mix them up to make other colors.

I also bought my clothespins from Walmart.  I found a 24 pack and bought 2.

Then I used plastic containers to mix the dye in.
***This is the important part when using the RIT dye, use about 2 cups of hot water.  I found out that cold water doesn't work well at all when staining wood.  To measure how much RIT dye to use I use the bottle cap.  I poured between 2-4 caps into the bowl.  With the darker colors I used about 2 caps.

I couldn't find any plastic silverware to stir the hot mixture so I used chopsticks (thank God for take-out Chinese food!).  I let the clothespins sit in the dye for about 5 minutes before I let them dry on styrofoam plates with a paper towel to soak the excess water.

And this is how they turned out!  The two green bags actually are different shades in person.  The bottom right is the actual dark green dye.  The green bag on the left is more of a brighter green.  I mix yellow and blue dye together.  I ended up making orange clothespins because I did not like the way the yellow turned out.  So I added a few drops of red to change the dye orange.

I loved how my colored clothespins turned out! I'm still debating on what I'm actually going to use the clothespin for in my classroom.  I'm thinking using some for my Behavior Clip Chart.

What do you use clothespins for in your classroom?  I need some more ideas!