Easy Tie Dye Jump Rope

Laurel recently has become obsessed with jumping rope, which has proven to be fantastic entertainment and exercise both on the playground at school and at home (often times indoors even, which I am OK with right now since it helps Laurel burn off energy). I bought her a lovely, eco-friendly Green Toys jump rope this past summer while we were in Maine and admittedly was a little disgruntled when she instead wanted a sparkly, pink, plastic jump rope that her friend had, even though the natural coils in the plastic made it harder to jump with.
Well, that jump rope broke and out came mama's jump rope. Personally, I love the natural look of this jump rope, but aesthetically it wasn't doing it for Laurel. So I decided to follow the successful lead of previous forays with dye (for example, Laurel's tie dye birthday party + dyeing all of her socks yellow so she would actually wear them as a toddler) to make her a tie dye jump rope.

And wow, that small effort (as in, literally minutes) made for major happiness (click on the thumbnail to enlarge photo). Laurel picked four colors of Rit dye (typically found at arts and crafts stores; I used the boxed dyes) and I mixed a little bit of each color with water in four plastic containers from our recycling bin. I set the dyes on a large plastic bag, put old produce bags on my hands (I couldn't find rubber gloves), and dipped sections of the rope into the different colors.

And that was it. Super easy. I left the jump rope to dry on the plastic bag and flipped it over once before I went to bed. The next day the jump rope was completely dry and the colors dried beautifully.

Now the only problem? Laurel said everyone's begging for a turn with her cool tie dye jump rope at school. Other than that, she's happily jumping cabin fever away!