We love exploring natures gifts at Hands 4 Floral and having fun experimenting with teas and different types of vegetable dying, for years Lee has used the tea staining method for washed out white clothes, staining laces and materials that she designed with, a friend recently told us that you could use Avocado seeds to dye you materials creating all types of dusty pink tones… so off we went and researched how to use this process as both of us have no experience using Avocado seeds, we chose to stain a collection of bleach white artificial roses which we now call – champaign pink roses.
We wanted to share our experiences as it was super easy and its a great tip to have when it comes to sustaining materials, like old clothes, it always a buzz for us creating something new with something you would normally discard.
Method
Add water and your Avocado seeds to your pot, use a large pot or appropriate size depending on what you intend to dye, i used 6 seeds in mine (the more you use the stronger the colour)
Bring your seeds to a boil and reduce it to a low to medium simmer until the water turns a deep velvet pink, it should take anywhere from 20 to 40mins before you will see the colour of the water change.
Once the colour of the water has changed i added my roses to the pot, normally you would use some type of cotton material as the seed dye binds better to cotton fibre then other fabrics, we used felted polyester roses as it was something we had and wanted to give some character to the rose as it was a bleached white. The dye applied to our roses beautifully, you would however have a more vibrant colour with cotton fibre.
NOTE: If you use artificial flowers be mindful that may be stuck together with glue and you may have to rebuild the flowers after the dying process due to the warm water, my rookie error being my first time – i added my roses in during the boiling process the glue on my roses melted lol – nothing to serious as a hot glue gun will fix this problem.
So that being said i would place your material in ONLY after the boiling process, once the dye has steeped and cooled so you don’t damage the materials or roses in my case. Some of the expert suggest that you can leave it over night and other say you can take it out once you’re happy with the colour choice. We left our roses in over night and were so happy with the result.
After you have removed your dyed item rinse it and hang it out to dry, it’s as easy as that… now all you have to do is enjoy. Below is our result
Tea Time
Also just wanted to add a quick tea staining tip as well, you can boil tea bags in a large pot and repeat the process above to add a rustic earthy tone to your whites, we tea stained some lace and artificial peonies, here are some pictures for you of how it turned out.
