Tinted Doily Crafts

I saw this idea in the February/March 2011 issue of one of my favorite magazines; Country Woman.

It was featured from the blog, charlottesfancy.com.

I had always wanted to try it, and when I was dying my Easter Eggs, I didn't want all that pretty pastel dye to go to waste. So I dyed some paper doilies!

If you have any of the little dye tablets left over, you can use them up. If not, just use food coloring! Just add enough water to dissolve the coloring, whether you are using the tabs or food coloring. Make the color fairly saturated.

Add about 1/2 to 1 cup more water, mix and pour into pie pans.

Line your work table with plastic. (I used garbage bags). The dye stains anything it comes in contact with.

Then cover that with a couple layers of paper toweling.

Now gather up as many pie pans and cake pans as you have and lay them out. This is what you will  use to dye the doilies in.

I used yellow, pink, purple, blue and green.  

Separate the doilies into two ply. You can do single ply, but they become very fragile, so I left them two ply. You can always separate them once they are completely dry.

Also, I found that the smaller sized doilies worked best, as the larger ones became too fragile to work with.

Using tongs, drop the doily in the dye bath and submerge. Let sit about a minute, then carefully turn over and submerge again. They become very fragile when wet, so don't grasp from the very edge, try to slide the tongs under the middle. Let sit another minute or so, until tinted through.

Remove doily with tongs and place on paper toweling. Straighten out any curled under edges and blot with more paper toweling.

Group like colors together so that if there is any dye bleed onto the paper toweling, it won't matter.

Pretty soon you will have a whole table full of pretty tinted doilies.

Let these dry several hours or overnight, turning once halfway through.

You will end up with a lovely stack of tinted doilies to use in all of your favorite paper crafts. Or just use them as is to line pretty plates.

Beautiful spring colors!

I used some to make pretty Easter Cards.

There is no end to the crafting possibilities.

Gift bags, envelopes, candy cones, even bakery boxes.

I hope this inspires you to make your own tinted doilies.

It's so easy and fun.