At the end of the school  year the vast majority of uniform shirts are stained, missing buttons and otherwise “ot sa’at”.  They can’t be passed down for the next school year, so I end up hoarding them in one of our large storage buckets in the storage room…knowing that there would be a future use for them.

In the past we used old school shirts for autograph memory shirts with all the kids writing/decorating on each others.  A permanent reminder of our sibling friends.  This time around I found another productive use for them and proceeded to set up the workstation in our multi-purpose laundry room.

We were finally able to put to use the Rit dye I had purchased a couple of years ago in the USA!

After watching a dozen youtube videos of different ways of tie-dying we decided upon 3 tie methods – 1). like a log, 2). spiraled, and 3). with marbles rubber banded in little spots.  This kept it relatively simple allowing the little ones to participate.

Being masters of up-cycling, we utilized the little former paint containers that had been previously cleaned out and were patiently residing in the craft cabinet waiting for the opportune moment to be of use.  With the perfect little-hand-sized bottles, the kids were able to squirt on their colour of choice with ease and precision, even Mr. Hong, who was able to do it one-armed, er…handed.

Then they were put outside in the hot sun to set the colours.

The next day the rubber bands were removed and the shirts were rinsed and hung to dry.

And finally their masterpieces were ready to wear!

And just like that, Wat Opot got a little…no A LOT cooler!

Out of site, man.