Colour Me Happy: Pasta Dying

I love making crafts--and when possible I prefer to make my own supplies as well, rather than buy pre-made stuff, because that's half the fun! I've started looking after a two-year old in addition to the boy-o, and I wanted to come up with some fun craft ideas that she would enjoy doing while the boy-o was napping. One of the things that was always a huge hit at the daycare was making rainbow coloured jewelry. I've used all kinds of materials in the past including FruitLoops (edible accessories!), beads and pasta. I didn't have FruitLoops or beads on hand, but I had tons of pasta and some food colouring, so I dyed my own "beads" for necklace making. It's super easy and the colours turn out nice and bright! I made Yellow, Green, Blue, and Red.

What You Need:

- a bunch of pasta noodles

- a ziplock bag for each colour you want

- as many colours of food colouring as you want

- rubbing alcohol

- wax paper

- paper towel

Instructions:

1. Place desired amount of pasta in each of the ziplock bags.

2. Splash a little rubbing alcohol into each bag.

3. Add a few squirts of food colouring to each bag, one colour per bag.

4. Roll the bags around and around to make sure the pasta gets well coated with the food colouring mixture. You can let the pasta sit in the bags for a few minutes to make sure it soaks in well.

5. Dump the ziplock bags out one at a time onto a thick pile of paper towel to absorb any extra food colouring mixture.

6. Transfer pasta from paper towel to wax paper to dry. (It really doesn't take very long!)

And when your pasta is all dried you'll have beautifully coloured "beads" all ready for necklace making or any other threading activity you want to use them for!