Monday, July 23, 2012

hand dyed noodle beads

I catch Eneye cringing when she sees me using food for other purposes than eating.  It must be the most absurd thing she's ever seen.  Almost as ridiculous as the girls and I jumping out of our car to gaga over a baby lamb on the side of the road.  Crazy Westerners!

There was a lot of cringing going on today because I dyed some pasta for crafty beading fun.  It was so easy Adelaide helped and the bright colors that we ended up with made me smile.

Stuff you will need:
Stelline (a small star shaped pasta) or any pasta with holes will do
food coloring-we like the fun neon colors
white vinegar or an alcohol based product like rubbing alcohol, astringent, finger nail polish remover
small bowls or cups
paper towels


We placed small handfuls of the stelline in ramekins and filled each one with the liquid until it covered the pasta (we used nail polish remover for two cups, rubbing alcohol for one and my old facial astringent for another-not to be tricky but because I didn't have enough of any one thing! All of them worked just fine.  I really would have preferred to use vinegar, I just didn't have any and once I get an idea in my head there is no stopping me.)

Add a few drops of food coloring (more drops for deeper colors) to each bowl and stir to coat the pasta.  Let it sit for 30 minutes or so.

Pour the colored pasta onto a paper towel lined dish and let it air dry.

It's really as simple as that.  When the pasta is dry you have lovely colored "beads" for threading into necklaces.  The stelline has such tiny holes that Addie will be allowed to use one of my sewing needles to thread them.  Bella will probably get a bowl of glue and a paint brush to paint onto paper and then sprinkle the colored pasta as art.

Either way this was a blast!  

1 comment:

Nicol said...

Such beautiful colors! Many years ago I used to work in Young Childhood Education and I remember several classes where we were told not to use food items with craft projects. Many foreigners would take offense or wouldn't understand that they weren't suppose to eat the brightly colored pasta. We certainly have a different way of doing things!