Nothing says summer fun like personalized tie dye beach towels! These tie dye kids towels are perfect for the pool or a beach outing. Kids will love tie dying these colorful towels and you will be surprised how easy it is to spray tie dye a towel!
You’ll Love These Tie Dye Personalized Beach Towels
This DIY tie dye project is so easy that the kids can get involved. You can customize the name on the towel and make one for every member of the family with different tie dye pattern colors.
At first, I was sure making a tie dye towel would be too difficult. Back in the ‘olden days’ of tie dye it was often incredibly messy and the results were unpredictable. What I love about today’s tie dye is that when you get the right tools, today we are using spray tie dye, you will end up with something that you love and it is surprisingly easy.
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What you need to make Personalized Beach Towels
That is one of the reasons why we love this tie dye idea to do with your kids. They will love the process fabric dye.
Supplies Needed to Make a Tie Dye Towel with Your Name
- Tulip One-Step Spray Dye Kit 7-Pack
- White terry cloth beach towel
- Duct tape
- Scissors
- Disposable table cloth -or use plastic garbage bags to cover surface
Spray Dye vs Tie Dye: What’s best for making personalized towels for kids?
We used the Tulip One-Step Spray Dye Kit for this project.
- Spray tie dye is incredibly kid-friendly. You just spray fabric dye right where you want the color to appear.
- This spray dye kit has everything you need for tie dye projects, including gloves and rubber bands.
- With a traditional tie dye, it would be harder to control the color and the mess. I am a big fan of the spray dye for tie dye projects like this personalized name towel.
Best towel to use for making Tie Dye Towels
We went to the source and asked Tulip Tie Dye what the best towel would be:
“White 100% cotton towels” work best.
We have always used 100% cotton white towels. The second thing that is very important is the size of the towel. Traditionally, beach towels are larger than 30 x 60 inches to be officially beach towels. I like mine to be a little larger than that.
Favorite White Cotton Towels for Tie Dye from Amazon:
- 2 Pack of Bath Sheet 100% cotton beach towels – 30 x 60 inches
- Oversized 100% cotton 3 pack beach towels – 35 x 68 inches
- If you prefer a beach blanket, check out the 100% cotton white bath throw blanket – 71 x 32 inches (the techniques will be a little different since this is a thinner cotton blanket vs. a thicker beach towel)
How to make a Tie Dye Beach Towel with name
Step 1
Cover your work surface with the disposable table cloth. This makes clean-up so easy because tie dye can get a little messy.
Step 2
Lay your white cotton towel out and use the duct tape to write your child’s name across the front.
Step 3
Now comes the fun part! Put on your gloves and start spraying the fabric dye colors onto the towel.
Tie Dye Tip: We wanted a rainbow look for our towel, so we started in one corner and moved from color to color. The kids tie dye kit we used had all the colors in one package to make it really simple.
Tie Dye Tip: We sprayed pretty lightly so that it would have more of an ombre look.
(Optional) Step 4
If you have a thick cotton towel, the colors may not bleed through the towel. In that case, turn the towel over and repeat spraying the colors on the back in the same pattern.
Step 5
Allow to air dry.
Step 6
Once both sides are dry, remove the tape and rinse the towel in cold water.
Finished Spray Tie Dyed Beach Towel
Some of the color will run onto the white letters — that’s ok! It will still be much lighter than the rest of the towel and it looks really cool!
How to Wash Kids Beach Towels
- Wash separately in a large load of hottest water suitable for fabric and a small amount of laundry soap.
- Dry separately.
- Wash and dry separately for the first few washes.
Watch Our Video to See the Steps for Making Name Beach Towel with Spray Tie Dye
Check out the live video tutorial we did a couple of years ago for this project. It has been seen by almost 300K people! This personalized beach towels project has become one of our most popular DIY ideas on Kids Activities Blog.
We had so much fun making this personalized tie dye beach towel over at our Quirky Momma Facebook page! <–If you would rather watch the video on FB, just click!
Tie Dye Personalized Beach Towels
This easy spray tie dye technique can be used with kids to customize their own tie dye beach towel with their name! This tie dye pattern is so easy, you will want to make one for every member of the family for summer.
Materials
- Tulip One-Step Spray Dye Kit 7-Pack
- White terry cloth beach towel
Tools
- Duct tape
- Scissors
- Disposable table cloth -or use plastic garbage bags to cover surface
Instructions
- Cover your work surface completely with plastic.
- Lay white 100% cotton towel out and use duct tape to write child's name on front.
- Put on gloves and grab the spray tie dye kit.
- Start with one color and spray on towel in desired pattern. To achieve an ombre tie dye look, spray lightly so the combination of two colors can be seen between stripes.
- Add color to back of towel if thick.
- Dry.
- Remove tape.
- Rinse towel in cold water.
More Tie Dye Fun from Kids Activities Blog
- Now that you’re ready to rock the beach with an awesome tie dye towel, check out these other colorful things to tie dye!
- Or check out our big list of tie dye patterns that are simple enough for kids!
- Tie dye art meets science in this cool ph science fair project.
- Did you know you could tie dye with sugar? This sugar tie dye technique turns out really cool on a kids shirt.
- Tie dye with food coloring! Love this idea to use what you have on hand for tie dye.
- Make tie dye Mickey Mouse shirts…these are perfect for the entire family.
- Make tie dye 4th of July shirts!
- Looking for an easy and awesome project? Check out this dip dye idea!
- Check out these tie dye patterns and techniques!
Here are 22 fun beach activities for kids!
What name will you put on your personalized tie dye towel?
Can I wash all of the towels together?
Hi, Jody! If I have an entire batch of tie dyed items that are all made with the same colors, I usually do. Otherwise, separate them to be safe for that initial wash!
Has anyone used removable vinyl to cut out the names?
I haven’t tried that yet, Melissa! If you try it, let us know how it goes!
If dying on the backside of towel, will color soak in under tape leaving no white when name is?
Hi, Cyndi! That is a good question! Unfortunately, I’m not sure! Maybe try doing a test run with a white hand towel and a small phrase on it, just to see what happens?