I have been wanting to try ice dying for a while now. A few years ago I made play scarfs for Capri for Christmas and they are one of our most used toys. That method involves boiling water and is not very kid friendly. Usually with ice dying you use actual dyes that are not safe for little ones to be using, so I decided to grab one more play silk to dye with kool-aid and ice (kool-aid doesn’t work on cotton just as an FYI).

We grabbed a foil roasting pan and cut some slits in the bottom, and put it on top of the lid that it came with with a bowl in the lid to keep the tin pan raised up. This allows the ice to melt through and the scarf to not sit in dye water.

After soaking our silk scarf in a vinegar water solution we laid it in the pan and covered it in ice. Thankfully we have an ice machine so this was easy for prep.

Once the scarf was covered in ice we grabbed our kool-aid packages.  The girls each spread a few packages across our ice and I used the last couple to fill in any blank spots.

Since it was a windy cool day we did our project inside which meant the ice melted slower. If it was not windy out we would have done it outside in the sun which would have speed up the process.

And the waiting game began. I had little girls climbing all over my table trying to stick their fingers in the ice and lick the kool-aid powder off (now it is important to note you have to use un-sweetened kool-aid so I am sure this did not taste good).

After the ice melted for the majority and all of the dye was on the scarf we took it out of the pan and rinsed it in cool water until the water ran clear.

After that we hung it outside to dry.

And this is our final product

We buy our silk scarves from The Dharma Trading Company.