This DIY Ombre Clothespin Garland is super easy and inexpensive to make. It just requires a bit of time and patience, and clothes you don’t mind dying a different color. I made the mistake of wearing a new mint green cowl neck sweater I was especially proud of since I found it on clearance at Target for less that $8. Since it quickly became mint green with bright red spots, I went ahead and dyed it too once my clothespins were finished. Still kind of sore about that one. I really liked the green.

For this project you will need:

Wooden Clothespins (We prefer the kind they sell at Dollar General, Wal-Mart pins are stain resistant and do not dye as well.)

String, Clothesline or Twine for hanging

Rit Dye, Plastic Containers, Hot Water, Newsprint or Paper for drying.

Patience and Old Clothes

Warm Sunshine or an Oven that reaches at least 250 degrees

About $7 for materials

Step-by-step pictorial shown first, then see below it for the directions that follow.

Step One: Remove nice clothing and replace it with clothing you don’t mind getting messy. This is really just a precaution, but if the dye splashes unexpectedly, you will instantly regret skipping this step. Trust me.

Step Two: Prepare hot water (almost boiling) and fill several plastic containers. Immediately add as much or as little dye to each container as you want. We used two containers, and gradually increased the amount of dye in each one with each new batch of pins we added. The more dye you add, the darker the color of course. We started ours with just a few teaspoons for the lightest shade of our ombre.

Step Three: Turn on your patience. Add as many pins as you want to each of your containers and move them around and dunk them so that they are fully covered. You will want to turn them over and move them around several times while you wait to make sure each side gets dyed evenly. We used another clothespin to do our adjusting so that we weren’t coloring our hands. You will need to wait a minimum of 10 minutes for each batch to absorb the dye.

Step Four: Carefully remove the pins using tongs or another clothespin, one at a time and place them onto your drying surface. Try to keep your groups together as this will make assembly easier in the end, rather than mixing your color shades all together.

Step Five: Once you have all of your pins dyed, place them in a warm dry sunny spot outside to dry. Alternatively you can place them on lined baking sheets in the oven at 250 degrees for about 30-45 minutes also. (This is what we did.) 

Step Six: Once your pins are dry it is time to assemble your garland. Your options here are totally up to your creativity. You could hang your pins onto your garland string going from light to dark, or you could place your lightest pins in the middle and go darker on each side working outwardly.

Get creative with your garland. Fancy things up by adding a transparent glitter for shimmer or even painting the tips a metallic color to add contrast! If I had it to do over again, I would have added a nice punch of Silver to the tops of each of my pins above the metal hinge. You can use this in a child’s room to hang artwork, as a backdrop for party decor, a fun photo booth prop or wedding decor. Use multiple colors and even create a rainbow spectrum by combining dyes.

We hope you enjoyed this easy on the eyes, wallet and skill level DIY Ombre Clothespin Garland.