Kids Craft: Dying Pasta + Free Medal Printable

Thursday April 3rd 2014

I love doing crafty things with my kids (I might enjoy it even more than they do!) and our Learn, Play & Create With Kids Pinterest board has given me a big inspiration boost and endless ideas.

I was browsing the board earlier this week and pictures of coloured pasta kept catching my eye so yesterday we got our penne and food colouring and got to work.

All of the tutorials I have read for dying pasta involve rubbing alcohol but we didn’t have any so I used rice wine vinegar and surprisingly, it worked! I have seen one or two use white vinegar but opted for rice wine vinegar as the smell isn’t as overpowering.

To dye the pasta:

In a small measuring container (the one we used was ½ cup) add 2 teaspoons of rice wine vinegar and about 8 drops of food colouring (you could add more or less depending on how vibrant you want your pasta

Add the pasta you are using (we used regular old penne) into a freezer bag and pour in the coloured mixture and shake it around until the pasta is covered in the mixture – repeat for each colour you are using.

Lay on a baking tray to dry. It took about two hours to touch without the colours rubbing off.

Now, what do you do with your dyed pasta?

Some of the ideas I have seen (thanks again to trusty old Pinterest!) include:

Using the pasta in sensory bins

Threading onto skewers

Separating into colours

Building trains or animals

Playdough Creations

We were originally going to thread ours onto wool to make necklaces but my eldest asked if we could make medals instead so I quickly designed a little medal attachment.

(Click to download free A4 size printable)

To make your medal:

Print and cut out your medal circle. These are quite large to make it easier for little hands to cut.

Thread the pasta onto the thread. I measured the wool out before we started to make sure each one could easily slide over my children’s heads.

Once ¾ of the string is covered with pasta, tie a double not to secure it.

Use a pipe cleaner to poke through the top of the medal cut out and then wrap it around the wool in the middle of the necklace (you could also use sticky tape or put a whole in the top and thread it on during the pasta threading process)

Easy peasy and as far as craft goes, it is pretty low mess and everything used can be found in most households.

Some tips for threading:

Depending on the age of your child, you may want to use a larger pasta or a thinner cotton. My two year old struggled a little with the penne especially as the wool was quite thick.

Stick a ball of blue-tack at the end of the string to stop the pasta from falling off while threading. We also used it to stick the end to the table (as pictured above)