DIY Ombre Shorts

Holy cow! It's twenty minutes before I leave for work and I just remembered that I had promised to post how to make those shorts I wore in my last post! It's actually very simple, and you could use just about any pair of shorts you like. I used a pair of high waisted Calvin Klein cut offs that I nicked from a thrift store a while back that I just didn't ever feel were snazzy enough. This spruced them up quite nicely :) So without further a-do, here are some instructions + pictures.

Materials:

1. Old jeans or cut offs

2. Hair tie

3. Something to hold your bleach/water (I used a milk jug)

4. Bleach

I literally just cut off the top of a milk jug and filled it about half full with hot water and just dumped bleach in. I have no idea how much other than I know the water turned a little bit green/yellow and it smelled! So just get a good amount in. More bleach = less color.

These are the shorts I used (plus a little corner of my knee ^^). 

Next, I gathered up my shorts in one spot and tied a hair band around them. Make sure that it's a pretty even line all the way around your shorts and that the bleach isn't going to be higher up on the back of your shorts. I had to even that out and play around with it until I felt like the line would wrap around evenly.

Next was the easy part. I just stuck the jeans inside of the jug and let them sit. Make sure your bleach/water mixture comes up as far as your hair band does, otherwise the "ombré" effect wont be as apparent. I let these sit for about 45 mins. They were a fairly light wash denim, however, so I would leave it sit longer if you are using a dark wash. 

Voila! Now you have your very own custom pair of ombre denim shorts. They were pretty easy to make, wouldn't you say? Make sure that when you wash them afterwards that you wash them alone, even if you rinse them out before hand, because you don't want any residual bleach messing up the rest of your clothes. Next time I think I'll use a darker wash denim and let the line a little bit down so it's more half/half in terms of coloring, but these still look great! Well, now I'm pretty sure that I'm officially going to be late for work, and I can't let those little kiddies down! Happy bleaching, guys :)

PS- Ignore the gross, brown, crunchy grass in the pictures. It has been so awful hot here, and combined with no rain for weeks now, so the poor grass is suffering. Maybe I should do a rain dance later on...