When I first wrote the title of this post, for some reason I wrote Grippy Soaks. It sounds like the name of my future two man hipster band, featuring my cat Harry on harmonica.
On to it!
Grippy socks - good for the goose and good for the gander. I wanted to make DIY grippy socks originally for my toddler, as we have hardwood floors and if he isn't wearing grippy socks, he just goes flying. And then, in the odd ten minute of peace and quiet in my house, I like to attempt sun salutations to at least get some blood flowing. The bottom line - we all needed some grippy socks.
Yoga socks for me, every day socks for him.
Tools:
- Socks!! (surprise, surprise!!)
- Puffy Fabric Paint - I choose Tulip brand, because I've heard it works well for this sort of thing and because it can in a glow in the dark variety. $16 for a 6 pack.
- Card stock or cardboard
- Time. The most precious tool of all. Total time depends on the number of socks but take about 2 minutes to paint and about 12 hours to fully dry.
1. The card stock is going to be used to create a hard, flat surface for the bottoms of your sock feet. I used some 4 x 6 I had laying around, and I cut each piece in half and carefully stuffed it into each sock. Make sense?
2. Get puffer painting. From experience, I recommend putting paint all the way up to the tip toes and on the heel, not just on the bottoms of the foot. Do zig zags, polka dots, self portraits - whatevs. As you can see, this is not really my finest artistic moment.
3. Let dry, preferably flat! Just lay them out on your desk or on your table. I actually ended up letting them dry for closer to 20 hours, over night, but the box says you only need to wait 4 hours. However - better to be safe than sorry!
Here are a few of the pairs I made for my little guy. I tried to do a different pattern on the bottom of each pair so I can keep track of the pairs.
I'll tell you what was really amazing about this project though - I bought the socks (16 pairs for $16 at Walmart) at 1pm on a Tuesday. By time I got around to puffy painting, at about 1pm on the Wednesday, I was missing four pairs of socks. Toddlers are incredible.
Those giant C's on the bottom row are supposed to be moons. Now that is talent.
