New hand-dyed ribbons are freshly dyed and restock in the Blue Sky Papers studio! We first started hand-dying the ribbons last year after we were on the hunt for a few specific hues with no luck finding them. We are in love with all things handmade and pride ourselves in doing things the traditional/old fashion way, so dying our own ribbons just made since.
The process is tedious but worth it in the end. It has taken us some time to get the combination of ribbon + dye + coloring just right, it’s been a fun learning process, for sure.
Below is a picture of the white ribbon, unspooled ready to be dyed. Behind it are the ribbon dye samples, the colors we are trying to achieve. This silk ribbon is great because it doesn’t have that raw edge that will fray over time (or really just by looking at it). While a little raw edge and fray can be astheticlly pleasing to the eye and look good in photos, practically speaking, putting a raw edge ribbon on a book that will be handle and used isn’t the best idea. It will quickly become a frayed, tangled, falling apart mess. You don’t have to worry about that with these silk ribbons!
We mix up our own dye colors using a combination of retroactive powdered dyes, mixed with a bit of vinegar to act as the bonding agent.
After mixing up the dye colors, you dip the ribbon into the dye batch, you stir it around really well and then let it soak. After soaking for some time (this time can vary depending on how saturated etc. you want the color to be) its time to rinse the ribbon and then dry it. You can hang dry or use a blow dryer.
After the ribbon is dried you untangle it (this can take a minute) and iron out the wrinkles created during the dying/drying process. Lastly, you spool the ribbon back up! Whew, we’re done!
Here we are checking our handy work against the ‘hero’ ribbon samples. Pretty close match! The coloring will vary slightly from batch to batch, but that’s ok because we are humans handmaking, not a machine manufacturing over here.
Here’s the pretty silk robbons on vow books and a shot of all the colors we offer below!