Behind the Scenes: Late March Tie-dye Photoshoot

While we can (and often do) spend an exorbitant amount of our free time making tie-dye for fun, we ultimately end up selling the majority of our creations as 710Visuals. As much as we love making them, there's just no feasible way for us to make full use of all the shirts (dresses, shorts, skirts, or bags) that we make, especially since we make items in sizes that we probably wouldn't be able to wear on a consistent basis. It makes more sense, logistically and creatively, for us to sell them... sometimes it's hard, you know, like sending a puppy you love off to a different home with a new family. You can't be certain of what the future will hold for that beloved little thing, but you have to hope for the best and send them off with a kiss and maybe, just maybe, a tear in the corner of your eye. Luckily we've had pretty positive reactions from our customers so far, and the more shirts we send off to their future homes the more customers will put their faith into us. I know I tend to be more trusting in shops with more sales and higher ratings, don't you?

The practical side of this need to send our shirts off to new homes is that we ultimately need to make time and arrangements to photograph them and try to do so in a favorable way (to show their best sides, naturally) so that they have the best shot at finding the right home. This has been a long and varied process over the years with a lot of ups and downs involved. There were mannequins, many amicable friends kindly aiding us by serving as models for us between conversation and fun with payments of food, and some silly outtakes... sometimes the outtakes make it into the actual product listing on Etsy or our website because they're just too fabulous (or funny) to not include! Besides, it helps show a glimpse of our personalities, too, which I think is a good thing. I know I tend to appreciate when the companies I choose to purchase from coming off as personable, approachable as if there are actual human beings involved in the process. It's nice to know I'm sending my hard earned money off to someone real, and it's even better if you dig the person's vibe. So hopefully, some of the good vibes we (purportedly) give off in person can be captured by a photograph. But photography is an art, and we're definitely still learning and finding our groove. 

On top of having to model the shirts and try not to look like a couple of awkward goofballs, there's lighting, location, framing, and color-key to consider. I never want to edit the photos too much, but I want the colors to be bright, vivid and true-to-life...which can be quite challenging in some situations. We tried shooting in our studio, which is a pretty limited space and had mixed results. 

But at least we have fun in the process, right?!

More photos below~

Art: More January 2018 ice-dye

Another day, another tie-dye. I suppose some people might consider it tedious work by this point, but for us it's a continual process of experimentation and discovery.  There's always new folds, new colour combinations, new alchemy to uncover. No matter how many times we've dyed there's always something new cropping up, some fun new melt, something to uncover. It always seems photogenic, to me, though I guess our viewers might have their opinions about such matters. Both +Antho Jay  and I have been pretty happy with our most recent batches of creations, and as each new batch is a further step in our journey of learning and creating, I like to imagine they keep getting better as we go.  We've been experimenting with applying the dye powder directly to the fabric and then applying the ice recently, in an effort to create more precise colour patterns and lines. We haven't been unhappy with the result- and we've had a couple of items come out that we were really excited about. I'll be posting about the reveal for those when the time comes, but for now please enjoy these photos of our behind the scenes creation process for our tie-dye. We're always trying new colours and techniques and though I've posted about our tie-dye many, many times in the past I can honestly say I don't feel that it's something that will ever become redundant due to the infinite methods for creation and combination available to us.  We recently invested in a big bulk box of shirts so that we could try to create whenever the impulse struck, and I've been very very pleased with the outcome of that. We've been making tie-dye on a nearly daily basis now and trying things we might not have otherwise delved into if we didn't have such a backlog of bounty to experiment with available. While Google might say otherwise, that's their problem. We love making tie-dye and are happy to share it with the world. We hope you enjoy our colourful creations! Plenty more photos will proliferate below, so enjoy the colourful alchemy occurring below. Cheers.

Art: January 2018 tie-dye round 2

Malcolm Gladwell once said it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice at any craft before one reaches master level proficiency, and while it's been disputed since it's initial publishing, I think it's a reasonable sort of goal-post for anyone seeking to really master their craft. If that's truly the case, though, we're going to be working at this for awhile yet... Though we started tie-dyeing some time in 2015 I'd estimate each individual shirt or fold design works out to roughly 30 minutes of hands-on-time with all the processing time included. I'd say we've hit around 200, maybe 300 hours? We're younglings in that sense, because there's still so much more experimentation to be done! Even though we've made over 400 items now, there's always so much more we could try, and there's always new colours and folds to experiment with! I suppose that could seem intimidating, and at times it has... when your budget is limited and your aspirations grand, it can be frustrating trying to work within the confines of your available funds- but, that too is in and of itself a great learning experience. We have a bounty of colours available to us right now, an amount I might even consider mildly absurd, but as a lover of colour I really can't complain. Every shirt shows a new aspect to a colour that might not have been revealed otherwise, and I sometimes find myself growing especially fond of a particular shade as my reserves of it dwindle to naught. In all honesty, if I'm happy to own 20-some-odd shades to slather on my lips, I can't at all be disappointed at a collection of textile dyes exceeding that! I'm not at all chagrined at having too-many-colour options beyond the logistical need to find a place for them to reside between dye sessions... and, alas, with our rather limited space for the time being I'm scrambling to find a balance between practicality, utility, and sanity. We're getting there with Antho's help, and once we sort and organise our back-log of new creations we'll have more room to work with. 

But the creative impulse is hard to ignore... so here we are.

Art: Winter ice-dye round four

Of course I've got more tie-dye for you, folks! I've said before my goal is to vastly increase our inventory this year and there's only one way to do that: make a whole lot more tie-dye! Woo-hoo! This is no punishment for us, though the rinsing process can at times be arduous- or perhaps it's better to say tedious more than anything, as no matter how much you rinse it seems like there's always a little more left. The process of ice-dyeing is itself rather magical to me and I absolutely adore seeing the reveal in the fabric as the colors slowly work their way from powdery dusting to technicolor tapestry. This post will only focus on the first phase of making the shirts- the dyeing process. Next post up will be more rinsing shots as those are pretty enough to merit their own separate log. Hopefully you don't mind, as this cuts down on the overload of photos in a single post and spares all of our servers and networks an extensive data binge. 

For this round it was just me, myself, dyeing as Antho was at work when the urge to create combined with the knowledge there was a half-melted bag of ice sitting outside our front door. I jumped to it and made a couple of 2XL/3XL tee-shirt dresses similar to this one. I posted the results on our instagram and it sold within moments of the listing going live! That was super exciting! We'll definitely be making more of these dresses as they are, like I said on Instagram, fabulous for summertime and it really was super comfy! The 2XL/3XL is a bit loose on me but we have small/medium and large/XL dresses on their way, too.  

Summer is coming and we've got you covered! This 2XL v-neck dress is super comfy and perfect for a day at the beach or a casual hike. More photos coming soon! . This will be live in the shop soon! . Etsy.com/shop/710visuals . . #tiedye #icedye #plussizefashion #plussize #2XL #2018 #summerstyle #summervibes #summer2018 #rainbow #rainbows #roygbiv #colorful #rave #festival #boho #bohemian #hippie #trippy #psychedelic #fashion

A post shared by 710Visuals (@710visuals) on Jan 20, 2018 at 12:39pm PST

For the actual dye process I was extremely anal retentive detail oriented when choosing and preparing my colors. We've invested in a decent selection of dyes to play with now, so there's a lot to choose from! I pulled them all out and made stacks based on the colors to create a precise rainbow fade using more than 15 different dye colors. Excessive? Perhaps. Sometimes I just can't help myself when it comes to being extra. 😘

More photos below!