Blue, Green, and Yellow

Every six weeks or so, Chewy.com delivers a 44-lb bag of dog food to our porch. It's inside a box, and to minimize the movement of the bag of dog food, the box is then stuffed with brown packing paper.

Last year I used the brown paper as Christmas gift wrap -- with sprigs and spots of color to decorate up the neutral tone.

This year, I thought I'd try something different and dye the wrapping-paper-to-be with Rit liquid dye. I had a number of wads of the packing paper, so I put the hottest tap water I could get into a kitchen trash can, added a big pot of boiling water, a whole container of Rit Royal Blue (8 oz), and stuffed the paper in.

Some of the packing paper more or less disintegrated into shreds; some made some really cool patterns (the second batch will be the wrapping paper), but the color was INTENSE and infected my imagination, as I happened to have squirreled away a heavy corrugated cardboard panel that came with my studio Football TV.

With some purchases of green and yellow Rit, I set to work, dyeing paper and unfolding it on the front lawn to dry.

Armed with the dried papers, a couple foam brushes, and Mod Podge, I more or less completed this decoupage torn paper panel today.

I say "more or less" because there are a couple areas I want to tweak, including removal of the blue stripe in the ochre area.

It was a ton of fun, and I look forward to trying other projects like this.