Copic Hand-Dyed Ribbon

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A few of you asked about how I hand-dyed the seam binding ribbon with Copic Various Ink Refills, that I used on the card/post below this one so I thought I would give you a quick tutorial.

1. Start with white ribbon or seam binding (this is why I always keep white of everything on hand!).  Place it in a snack sized ziplock bag.  After I use a bag, I mark it with the color family, so I can just reuse it again the next time I need ribbon in that color family.  You can certainly use a fresh bag each time, if you wish:

 

2. Place a few drops of your LIGHTEST Copic Various Ink Refill color (here I'm using R83) onto different spots on the ribbon.  I only used about 3 or 4 drops on this amount of ribbon (about 16", which is enough for at least one card).  I usually don't bother to zip the bag closed, but you can if you wish.  Working quickly (because remember the Copic Various ink is alcohol based and will dry quickly once exposed to air, although it dries a bit slower in this situation), squish (that's a technical term!) the ribbon around inside the bag with your hands that are on the outside of the bag.  This way, you don't get your hands covered in permanent ink!  If you don't have enough ink to get the color distributed evenly, that's okay, we'll take care of that in the next step!

3. Place a few drops of your DARKEST Copic Various Ink Refill color (I used R85) into the spots that didn't get covered in ink the first time and repeat the squishing procedure.  To get a more variagated look, you can start with an even lighter color than I did in the first step -- say, R81.

 

ONE COLOR / SPRITZING OPTION: If you'd rather not have a variagated look, you can certainly use just one color of ink.  If you are concerned that drops of ink color may not be uniform enough for the look you are trying to achieve, you can place the ink into a spray bottle (I prefer Ranger's small Mini Misters) and spray the color more evenly onto the ribbon.

4. Next, you can let the ribbon dry naturally for a little while but I'm ususally too impatient to wait, so I take the ribbon out of the bag and place it onto a tissue and squeeze it all up into a ball, letting the tissue absorb whatever ink may still not be dry:

 

Squeezing the ribbon will also give it the shabby wrinkled look.  If you don't want that wrinkled look, just lay the ribbon out flat onto some tissue or paper towel and blot it dry.

 

5. If the ribbon dries and isn't wrinkled enough for your taste, or if you opted to let the ribbon dry flat and unwrinkled, you still have the option of wrinkling it more by just spritzing it with a little water and crinkling it up again.  Adding the water WILL NOT make the color run or transfer off anywhere -- that's the nice thing about the permanent Copic Various Ink!

I hope you have fun dying your own ribbon now!

 

Comments

[MargieH]

1.

Great tip, Sharon!!
Thanks - hope you are doing well.
Have a great weekend :)

[Shirley N]

2.

Thanks Sharon, will give it a try!

[Janet Castle]

3.

Great tip...now to get the white ribbon!!! LOL!

[Peggy H.]

4.

Thanks for sharing! Now I will always have the right color ribbon!

[Delama]

5.

I like how you done with the ribbon.
Thank you for sharing.
Have a great day :)
Delama

[agnes]

6.

thanks sharon. nice tut.

[Nancy Jensen]

7.

Thank you so much for that tutorial! I might try that sometime... but I think I'll have to get right ink refills in the colors I want first. But it doesn't look very hard.