More Disc Art

Last night I stayed up waaay too late, but I had the opportunity to delve into yet another type of artwork: the art of dyeing discs. Being in the disc golf world I know quite a few people who dye their own discs. Some people are really talented and do some amazing work that they sell, and some people like to just make their discs look different than everyone else's.

Widye.com is a company that custom dyes discs, and has donated some great dyed discs to my disc golf event (Hope Open) for the past two years. This is one of my favorites:



There was also someone who dyed me an amazing disc with the M*A*S*H* cast on it, and a neat red cross in the back. I'll need to take a picture with something other than my phone before I post it.

Here is my first dye-job from last night (You can see how messy my desk really is...):



It was a pretty easy process, especially since my friends had everything and did all the necessary research. First thing we did was take off the hot-press stamp of the logo with acetone, which is really easy if you let your disc set in the acetone for a couple minutes (just not too long, acetone will eat the disc!). The next thing was to decided what color of dye to use, then put it in a pan and heat it up on the stove. It only needs to get as warm so you can still touch it, so definitely not boiling. As the dye was heating up, I came up with my design and cut it out on some contact paper (one side is sticky- you stick it to your disc, my friends got it pretty cheap at Home Depot). After sticking the contact paper on my disc where I did not want the dye to hit, I put the disc face down into the pan so it was floating on top. Then all you do is wait for 10 - 15 minutes, and see how it looks! I think I waited a little longer and added in more dye so it was dark enough. Then I rinsed it off with warm water in the sink, took of the contact paper, and wah la! I have a pretty disc!

I'm excited to try this again in the future, when I can put some more time into thinking of cool designs and play with more than one color. Definitely different than submitting designs to a company to get hot stamped on a disc!