After many attempts to colour pasta for crafts I've finally found a method which is quick,
easy, frugal, & creates little mess! Yay!
To dye our pasta we used:
A selection of food colouring
A small bottle of hand sanitiser which contains alcohol
Resealable food bags (grip seal/zip lock bags)
* Add the dry pasta shapes to the resealable bag along with 2 generous squirts of hand sanitiser & around 5 drops of food colouring. The more food colouring you add the richer the colour will be.
* Seal the bag to prevent any mess, & then gently massage the colour into the pasta. The key word with this is gently as any sharp pasta may split the bag.
* Once all the pasta is covered in the dye leave the pasta to sit in the bag for around 10mins. Then spread the coloured pasta on a baking sheet or a large plate to dry (I lined our baking sheet with baking parchment to prevent the pasta sticking, & used an old wooden spoon to spread the pasta so the dye didn't colour my hands). Leave the pasta out to dry overnight.
This activity was a real hit with Minnie! We created a variety of shades (red, orange, blue, green, violet) & can't wait to try it out again using alternative pasta shapes. (I used a bag of economy pasta which was just 30p - bargain!)
The colour of the pasta was beautifully vibrant & perfect to use for craft activities.
To create some sparkly pasta shapes take a small selection of the coloured pasta & place it in an old container (we used an ice-cream tub) along with a large blob of glitter glue! You could mix the pasta & glitter glue with an old spoon, but my girl used her hands!! Sensory fun a go-go! Soon the pasta was covered in glitter, & much to her delight so were her hands!
Spread out the sparkly pasta on the baking parchment, & leave to dry for a couple of hours.
I was amazed at how fast the glue dried, & that none of the glitter came away from the pasta!
We added a little glitter glue to plain pasta which looked great too.
Not only can these bright & sparkly shapes be used in so many craft & play activities, they're fun & cheap to make, & children can be hands on creating them!
