- All categories
-
Clothing
-
Shop by size
- Clearance
INTRODUCTION
Take a (virtual) stroll down memory lane all the way back to the very start of what's now known as: Paradisiac Dyes, The Online Oasis of One-of-a-kind Tie Dye Design! Think of this as a sort of Brand Biography, or, a deep-dive style about page detailing the timeline of a true one-person-operation!
࿊ My start in wearable art
࿊ Etsy era
࿊ Hemp Jewelry
࿊ Tie dye booths, tents, IRL events
࿊ Fig tree shit
࿊ Tie dye bar & studio
࿊ Content opps around the house
࿊ Present & future endeavors
The earliest evidence I could find of tie dye becoming a part of my life was September 2014 (see left). It was around that time I first began dabbling with Tulip brand dyes from the craft store, using nothing more than paper towel to tie dye on top of (so wasteful, I know).
If I had to guess, I probably only converted to the "splat rack" concept whenever it was I decided to try ice-dyeing for the first time. Naturally, this also would've been right around the same time I got my hands on some of the real stuff for the very first time: Dharma Fiber Reactive Procion Dyes.
The earliest evidence of experimenting with the ice-dye method I could find (pictured above) was from early 2016; just about the same time I first got my hands on a few different Dharma Fiber Reactive Procion Dye colors.
Now that I think back on it, this may very well have been one of, if not, the first ever tie-dye I made using fiber reactive dye (pictured right). I distinctly recall the feeling of utter disbelief at the level of intensity & vibrant color the Dharma dyes were able to achieve. 
It wasn't very long into tie-dyeing "just for fun" that I became hooked on the entire process. But, not long after that, the question of: if I continue tie-dyeing as a hobby, what on earth will I do with all the stuff I end up making? also began creeping into my mind.
ETSY SHOP ²
It was around this same period of time (2013-14) that I first heard of this "new", up and coming online marketplace, Etsy.
The idea that people might be willing to pay real money for my incredibly amateurish tie-dyes never once crossed my mind, nor did I ever entertain the thought that I could successfully run a little online shop.
Nevertheless, after much insistence from my mom, mainly, I eventually made an Etsy shop anyway.
Not long after listing a few things, to my shock and pleasant surprise, someone bought a t-shirt!
It was my second ever sale that was really exciting, though. Within a week or so, I'd sold a second shirt. Not to just anyone, but, someone in the same exact city in Pennsylvania my first order shipped to.
This could only mean one thing: word of mouth advertising. Supposedly, the most powerful form of advertising; something that'd already been cemented in my brain thanks to the one and only marketing / entrepreneurship college-prep style class I took my senior year of high school.
To think, I was lucky enough to witness this very phenomena unfold before my eyes despite the fact my Etsy shop, beachbumbotique...was exactly that: Beach Bum Botique...with the "BOUTIQUE" blatantly misspelled, and listing pictures taken directly on top of my wrinkled just-slept-on-hours-before leopard print bed sheet.
In retrospect, surely my first however many orders must've been just that: LUCK.
Long before I ever decided to dip my toes in tie dye, I was completely captivated by, and obsessed with hemp jewelry.
An obsession originally evoked by the rotating display of Klutz brand DIY craft books in the kid's section at Barnes & Noble.
Something I spent years of my childhood dreaming of one day being allowed to have. The friendship bracelet & hemp jewelry books, to be exact. Seashells, or, really anything in the realm of beachy & tropical, being another thing I've always been inexplicably allured to.
It was a solid few years of yearning for one, or both, of those Klutz books before my mom finally gave in, allowing me to possess something she perceived to harness the potential to cause even the most minor mess. That something being the friendship bracelet book.
It felt like another few years passed before I finally got my hands on the forbidden book I really wanted all along: Hemp Jewelry. As I write this in 2025, I still have it to this very day.
You know what, I can't recall ever being good at making hemp jewelry as a kid, even for a kid. I think it's safe to say it's something I didn't become kind of, sort of decent at until picking it up again as a young adult, shortly after starting my first Etsy shop. With the beach bum branding and all, what's more "on brand" than hemp and seashells!? My passion was reignited.
I say first Etsy shop because eventually, I decided to split tie dye & hemp jewelry into two separate shops. That's when Hippie Made Hemp came to be. 
Cool rocks and geodes were another thing I'd always been abnormally captivated by. Good luck ungluing me from one of those overpriced "fill-a-pouch-with-as-many-polished-rocks-as-you-can-fit" souvenir-type stands.
THE GEODE PATTERN
Serendipitously, it was during the same time period that my passion for creating hemp jewelry began to fizzle out, that I saw a geode inspired ice tie-dyed design for the first time (2018-19ish).
STARTING SHOPIFY
Sometime in-between, my shop name first evolved from Beach Bum Boutique/beachbumtiedye, to Detroit Tie Dye Co./detroittiedyeco (on Etsy). 
As for, Hippie Made Hemp, nowadays that's nothing more than one of the dozen domains I squat even though that Etsy was such a short-lived, flash-in-the-pan, and despite having zero intention of handcrafting hemp jewelry ever again.
I originally entered into the e-commerce space with an (archaic) preconceived notion that the "path to success" for a small, handmade product business necessitated participating in craft shows, art fairs, etc.
An allure surely influenced by craft shows/vendor booths being yet another thing I was inexplicably fascinating by as a child.
Less than a year into selling the occasional tie-dye tee on Etsy, I began eyeing local events, while consuming all the content I could find in the realm of [how to plan/things you need to know/do/etc.] before your 1st craft show.
The first was in December 2014, a Christmas craft show at a nearby elementary school my friend's kids went to. By this point, I'd already discovered the typo in "boUtique", as evidenced by the correct spelling on the awesome hand-drawn banner my friend made!
Memorial Day Weekend of 2015 was my first "official" feeling event. This time I had a full on tie dye booth with multiple tables (slideshow above, pictured left).
(Fun fact: over 9 years later, in August 2024, I unexpectedly wound up in nearly the exact same parking spot while filming a vlog for my YouTube channel (vlogging the behind-the-scenes side of operating this online tie dye shop 100% solo)
Given how much content on the topic I presumably consumed in the lead up to my first "big event"; it's a shame more of it wasn't focused around how-to best display products, and arrange the physical space itself. Judging by how hilariously flat and two-dimensional everything was.
In 2016, I attended the same event a second time. Despite this being the first year I attempted to get more creative with my product displays (by doing anything besides laying tees flat on a table), I failed to snap a single photo of my tie dye booth the entire time.
The vision I had for my booth display this second time around was the what caused me to acquire as many clothing racks as I now have. I convinced myself I needed enough to fill the entire perimeter of my parking-spot-turned-tie-dye-booth.
Only to ultimately discover, on the day of the event, I didn't have nearly enough tie-dyes to fill out even a fraction of the clothing racks I brought and setup, embarrassingly enough.
Then, there was this random parking lot event I was invited to last minute for free (slideshow above). I spent the entire day picking tie-dyes up off the pavement whenever I had the chance, in-between attempting to catch falling clothing racks every few minutes, sometimes seconds. Again, I found myself leaving with every single tie dye I'd brought along. Needless to say, I left rich in lessons learned.
I'm gonna take a wild guess that this one at a local high school's Christmas Bazaar came next (slideshow above). I'm pretty confident I made zero sales at this one, too. Nothing new!
By this point, I swore off in-person events entirely. Until I received an invitation to the 2019 Ann Arbor VegBash.
While I do believe that to be true, and as awesome as it is to have the opportunity to connect with others and network IRL, I hate to say it, but...all of them were still, overall, a waste of time (strictly speaking from a business/monetary standpoint).
Funnily enough, it was only before the last event I ever attended that I finally grasped the importance of, and so invested in a 10' x 10' canopy tent, and lots of sandbags. All thanks to the what I learned from the wind a year or two earlier.
At the end of the day, had I not given selling tie dye IRL a try, it'd undoubtedly be one of those things I'd go the rest of my life wondering "what if..." about. Especially given my inexplicable fascination with exactly those type of vendor tents as a kid, I couldn't help but think: this is it, this is what I'm destined to do! 
Above all else, each event was a unique learning experience that ultimately served to help me hone in on what my vision for The Online Oasis of One-of-a-Kind Wearable Art Designs really, truly is.
Despite how much certainty I feel in my decision to never have a tie dye booth or tent at an in-person event again; I couldn't shake the fact I never succeeded at, never fulfilled the desire to set-up a space that I felt adequately brought my vision of the Oasis of One-of-a-Kind Tie Dye Design to life.
(pictured above: the one & only mockup tent setup in the backyard, in preparation for the August 2019 event)
But, it's now 2025 as I write this, going on six years, over half a decade, and I've failed to pull it off every summer since. Holy shit, putting it into perspective like that is...beyond words...
I find it disappointing I never thought to put my lifelong interest in photography inherited from my grandpa to good use until 2018-2019. Around 2018, a year or so before the mockup tie dye tent idea first came to mind, I'd already begun contemplating the importance & potential value of product photography above & beyond the black background flat-lay pictures.
But, I was completely brain-blocked when it came to generating ideas.
Although outdoor product photography was something I'd done in previous years, possibly for as long as I've been tie-dyeing, for some reason I never thought to go beyond picturing individual tie-dyes all by their lonesome on the clothesline.
Except for maybe just this one time, somehow I had the wherewithal to snap a cool clothesline picture of one of, if not the first ever custom project I took on for a dozen or so Neon Rainbow Spiral T-Shirts (a design I still offer to this day)!
My desire to figure out ways to cultivate captivating product displays that still featured tees on mannequins, just upright instead, is what inspired something I now refer to as fig tree shit for the very first time in 2020.
The first ever fig tree product pictures featured a few of my mannequins placed directly on the grass, lined up side-by-side.
That first year, I decided to fixate on getting pictures specific to each product collection on the site.
As lousy as the first few years of fig tree pictures were; featuring luscious, green, tropical fig leaves as the background of any pictures I could possibly think of quickly became my new obsession, and has remained a yearly tradition, something I obsess over doing all summer long, ever since.
It wasn't until 2021 that my fig tree shit skillset evolved to also begin making use of my many wicker baskets as "risers", basically.
I experimented with staggering the baskets at different heights, eventually over time getting a feel for how to best arrange the baskets in such a way that'd allow me to feature as many tie-dyes as possible in frame.
Fast forward to present day (2025), that's almost exclusively what I use my wicker baskets for these days: as "props" for product displays. Both indoors and out.
I now refer to these different setups as either: duo, trio, fig-four, or fig-five displays.
This is what tie dye studio looked like back in 2018, during the same period of time I was just starting to build this website!
Here's an idea of what my (half-assed) "studio" space, from late 2018 until Sept. 2020 looked like. It wasn't aesthetically pleasing in the slightest, and I'm almost certain I intentionally avoided showing it in photos.
Thus, have very few photos from this period of time. My setup consisted of one rectangular table against the wall, a folding lawn chair, and a small 3-tier shelf to store dye supplies.
It was a custom commission for a bunch of fleece fabric and hoodies that was the catalyst behind purchasing the biggest, longest storage bins I could possibly find. In an attempt to maximize work space/number of pieces I could have in-production at one time.
Those "jumbo XL splat racks", as I now call them, came in handy for a few other custom projects shortly thereafter; one for 40-something horizontal striped tie-dyed tees, and another for 15ft long Bubblegum Spiral tablecloths, totaling 585ft of fabric (on a rush!)
Surprisingly, it wasn't until Fall of 2020 that the idea crossed my mind for the first time: If only I could move that ping-pong table to where I currently tie dye, there'd be nothing stopping me from putting that awesome, PINK bar top to use as a literal tie & ice dye bar...
Best. Idea. Ever. I couldn't resist acting on it. I rearranged the basement by myself, very possibly that same night.
In the following months, I got carried away using the idea of the "tie dye bar & studio" to justify buying a bunch of organizational stuff.
CONTENT OPPORTUNITIES THAT CREATE THEMSELVES
More specifically, I was considering everything from a content creation standpoint; scheming & strategizing ways to optimize my new tie dye bar to be content-ready, as constantly as possible, from the very start. Back then, I was digging my heels in toward the stupid, new short form video trend (or so I thought...). I was intent on getting pictures, and only pictures, forever, damnit!
For Instagram & Pinterest primarily, although I always intuitively knew it was website content I should be prioritizing first and foremost. It wasn't until 2021 that I finally felt like I'd unlocked a new level of clarity regarding website content.
I was deep into the blackhole of masterminding a full blown website redesign, a complete visual makeover at least in terms of new imagery everywhere, when I received the opportunity to make over 200 custom tees for a choir.
An opportunity I felt I couldn't say "no" to. I assured myself I'd bounce back and resume wherever I left off as soon as I finished and shipped all the shirts, simple as that. Except it wasn't. I never quite regained focus and bounced back into the headspace I was in prior to that.
Fast forward to Spring of 2022, with no significant progress made on the website makeover side of things. One day I was sitting around stoned, and, out of nowhere had a moment of, "wait a second, what was I just doing? that scratched an itch that hasn't been scratched in years". Whatever it was, was something all the infinite scrolling in the world could never otherwise achieve.
I opened my phone and looked through my most recently opened apps, expecting to be quickly reminded of what it was I was just doing/reading/watching seconds before. But, I wasn't. Instead, I was perplexed by the fact all of the most recently used apps I had opened were from a good while earlier. I continued to sit in my confusion for another minute or few before it suddenly dawned on me: I wasn't reading, or watching anything...well, I wasn't watching anything via my phone, at least. I was zoned out, staring at the wall, watching an imaginary, hypothetical vlog of my own play out in my mind. A day-in-the-life of a Shopify solopreneur/online tie dye shop behind-the-scenes type of thing. And it was so much more interesting and fulfilling than anything else I'd done in as long as I could remember.
For some reason, daydreaming of what my own "day-in-the-life" type vlogs might be like was nothing new; rather something that crossed my mind regularly. But, it was always just a fleeting thought quickly followed up by "I'd never do YouTube".
This zoned-out-staring-at-the-wall moment, though, was different. I can't articulate how or why, but, it was the very first time I seriously pondered the idea: maybe starting a YouTube channel is a good idea, since I can't help but perceive my life playing out as a vlog in my imagination, anyway. I tried shoving the thought far out of my mind, telling myself "ha, maybe, just maybe I'll entertain the idea again as soon as I finish the other 100+ projects I've abandoned".
Bingo. I start 99 things but never finish 1. Why not vlog exactly that, the behind-the-scenes of attempting to finish 100's of website related things. This how the concept I now call: Mission De-Procrastination came to be. The premise being, use vlogging as a tool/incentive to snap myself out of this cycle of procrastination once and for all before I self-sabotage my tie dye shop into extinction.