St. Patrick's Ranbow Pasta Bracelets

I am getting ready for a Hood Magazine event this weekend where I needed to have a craft project ready to go for kids to do at our Hood Magazine booth for the Parks and Rec Activity Fair in our town. They are expecting around 1000 families so we had to think of something that would work for a large number of people.

We had some leftover yarn from another event so to use it up I figured we could dye some pasta rings to make beads to string onto the yarn. We choose the tiny rings so that they will go a long way for the cost.

I had seen pasta being dyed Here on Pinterest but they used rubbing alcohol. I was not too keen on that idea so I stuck by my old colored rice recipe and it worked fine for pasta rings as well.

For the bright colors they have on pasta on Pinterest you have to use food color gel. We used the regular food coloring in the primary colors to help keep our costs low. to see the colors with Neon food coloring you can peek at my colored rice post.

What you need:

Ziploc Bag we used a gallon to make 4 cups.

Freezer Paper or wax paper.

Pasta

Vinegar

Plastic or rubber gloves optional, but you might want them.

Yarn and tape to make bracelts.

The ratio:

1 cup pasta

1 T vinegar

10 drops of food coloring.

When we did our pasta we put 4 cups of pasta in a gallon Ziploc bag. We mixed 4 T of vinegar with a few nice sized squirts of food coloring in a measuring cup. Add this mixture to the bag. Close the bag and shake well until color is distributed equally.

Then open the bag and spread out on freezer paper to dry. It dried in about 2 hours which is about the same as the rubbing alcohol recipe. I think this is a by far saver option if you are working with children on this project.



And... if for some reason you find yourself in the situation where you need to eat your colored pasta you don't have to worry about it at all. It is all non-toxic ingredients.

 Then we took our yarn and put two knots in the bottom so the pasta would not slide off. Then we put some tape on the end and cut it at an angle so that it makes a point like a needle. This made it easy enough for my 4 year old to string. The minimum age for this size of pasta I would say is 4 years old.

You could dye larger pastas for toddlers to string.

Fruit loops are also a good substute for those little fingers.

And although these small rings were too hard for him to string, my two year old was all about being the bracelet module today. Got to love those chubby little toddler hands.

Precious!