Crafty Cowgirl Series, Episode 1, Tie Dyed Reins

Hi there! It's been such a fun and busy summer here on our little "Patch-A-Heaven!" We have been riding
horses a lot!! And as far as I'm concerned...that's perfect. I have loved and ridden horses since I was a small child. And that love has never left me. We currently have 6 horses here on our little farm, yes...I am in fact what you might call "horse poor!" (If you are not familiar with this term, basically it means you make plenty of money, but you have so many horses that you spend it all feeding, vaccinating, shoeing, medicating and taking care of them so it seems that you are in fact...poor.) Well, money or not, horses bring a certain joy into my life that isn't present when they aren't! So they are totally worth it. (And they must be, because I spent all day yesterday and into the night caring for one with colic and I'm still happy about it, but that's a story for another day.)

Today I realized that in all my "horsing around" that I haven't given this blog the attention and love it deserves. So I thought it would be fun to combine my love of horses and being a cowgirl with my love of being creative and crafty. My girls have always loved to tie dye shirts every summer which is a tradition for us, but I saw some plain white riding reins in my local IFA store and it sparked some creativity! I thought of how fun it would be to have some tie dyed reins. And that's just what we created.

My first thought was to do it like we do T-shirts by rolling them up around themselves to create a circle, then using elastics to section off areas for separate colors. I tried this, put it in a plastic bag all day, took them out, rinsed and they didn't hold the color like I had hoped. So if at first you don't succeed, try try again as they say! So this time, I clothes pinned them to my hog panel fence (getting really cowgirl now!) and individually dabbed on the colors where I wanted them up and down the reins using the bottle full of dye. I left white space in between the colors to allow for bleeding so the colors didn't bleed into each other. The reins are white cotton braids so if yours are like that just take it slow, if you squirt a lot of colored liquid on at once, it will just run off. So go slow and dab it on, while gently squeezing the bottle until you have achieved the desired color.  Then I allowed the reins to fully dry. I didn't rinse them this time so the colors are bolder!

I like how they turned out. This is a fun, easy project that would be fun to add some color and individual style to your horses life. Way more fun than plain white reins right?!!

Here are some pics from our tie dye rein project:

These are the reins before I started and the color kit I used for today's project.

If you use this method, I would highly suggest stopping way before the elastics (leaving some white) to allow for bleeding.

As you can see on the below pic there is quite a bit of bleeding into the yellow by the purple and pink so make sure to leave some bleeding space if you use this method.

The other method, which I used the second time is to hang by clothespins on a fence and apply the color wherever you want (again, leaving bleeding space.)

Here is our handsome equine model, "Tank" (we love him!) He's wearing what all the cool horses will be wearing this Fall!!

We love how our reins turned out! Hope you loved the first of our "Crafty Cowgirl" Series. Watch for more Creative Cowgirl Inspired Projects coming to the blog soon!!

Until then, have a Fancy Day!! And much love from our little "Patch-A-Heaven!"