first few attempts
We’re having a little Easter party with some of the girls from work this week and I’m so excited! We have a little after-work get together every few months, the excuse for us to meet up and laugh – and have a drink or two – varies (past gatherings have included pumpkin carving and a cookie exchange) but one thing that remains the same is that we all bring something yummy for the group to enjoy. Since Easter is arguably the prettiest holiday – so many pastels! – we thought we would try to make this the prettiest party yet.
I am really loving the ombre trend currently (well, at least I’m assuming it’s a trend… I feel I see it everywhere lately) so I thought it would be fun to try and make some ombre pastel cupcake liners to match the ombre cupcakes I’m planning on bringing to the party. I scoured the internet for a DIY, but sadly to no avail, so I had to make it up myself… a daunting prospect.
The cupcake liners didn’t soak up the dye like I thought they would, so they ended up being more dip dye than ombre… but despite not turning out quite as planned, I am definitely pleased with the results. I know I’m a bit biased, but I think they turned out really well. They’re prettier than plain white cupcake liners, but far less expensive than the printed ones that are available.
all finished
What you’ll need:
- white cupcake liners
- food colouring (I used red, blue and green)
- water
- bowls for mixing the dye in that are wide enough on the bottom to fit the top of a cupcake liner
- newspaper or an old sheet to protect the surface you’re working on (it can get messy)
It’s pretty simple actually, all you have to do is mix the food colouring in a bowl with some water (use more water for lighter shades) and then dip the top of the cupcake liner in it. I tried dying the bottom of the liner and it didn’t work so well, but perhaps you’re more talented than me and can pull it off. Also, as I mentioned the cupcake liners don’t soak up the dye very quickly, and since I’m rather impatient I ended up just swishing them around in the dye so the process would go much faster. Swishing them around means that the colour at the top won’t be even, but I kind of like it that way.
After you’ve put the liners in the dye mixture, there will be some excess on them (as you can see above). You can either just wait it out and it will dry eventually, making the colour a bit darker… or you can gently tap the liners on the edge of the bowl to shake off the excess dye. Just make sure you have something underneath, because as you can see below, it can get a bit messy.
The colours I chose to do were pink, purple and seafoam. Mixing up all the colours brought me back to elementary school – it was fun!
Pink was just red dye and water; Purple was a mixture of blue and red (though I think I might have accidentally used more blue than red); Seafoam was a mixture of blue and green (think it was pretty equal that time).
