Hand-dyed Vintage Beads Experiment 👩🔬
Because we’re SO in love with vintage here at Luneta’s HQ, we’re always looking for ways to incorporate it in our lives! Vintage is always a more sustainable choice than buying new, and it’s just much more charming, if we do say so ourselves ☺️ I saw this vintage 1950s fabric dye for sale and couldn’t resist buying it, even though I had no fabrics to dye 🤣 The typography alone got the best of me…. I then took a look at my pair of Rococo Love earrings and thought “hmm if it dyes fabric maybe it can also dye acrylic?”, and thought I’d do a little experiment!
How cute is the packaging for Jiffy Dyes?? I got 3 colours, green, blue and pink. You can see the clear Rococo beads on the right of the photo (they’re so hard to photograph!! XD). These beads were made from acrylic in the 1960s.
I thought I’d follow the Nylon instructions as nylon is a type of plastic, like acrylic. The dye powder was a bit melted together but once I added boiling water it still melted well! After bathing the beads in the dye + hot water mix, I bathed them in a separate bowl of cold water + vinegar.
This is how they looked right after coming out of their cold water + vinegar baths! Very faint pastel tones, super cute 😍 The green dye turned out more of a light yellow, while the blue one is a light lilac-y blue. Only the pink one actually turned out pink XD
Again, it’s really hard to photograph them 🤣 But you can faintly see how they turned out in earring form! If you’d like to get your hands on these hand-dyed cuties, make your way to the Rococo Love earrings page 😘 As this was an experiment, I’m not sure the dye will last forever, although I can confirm it’s now been over a week and the beads still have their light yellow (from the green dye), light lilac (from the blue dye) and light pink shades 🌈