How to Dye Pasta for Crafts

It is super double coupon week at Harris Teeter and I managed to snag some pasta for only 30 cents a box! Since we don't eat much pasta in our home I decided to purchase some for the classroom.


Dying pasta is super easy, economical, and has many uses in arts and crafts projects. In our classroom we plan to make necklaces, bracelets, and collages. Stringing the pasta will provide an opportunity to improve fine motor skills. In addition to these ideas we can also use it for counting and making patterns.

As you can see, the pasta turned out bright and colorful. The colors remind me of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Ingredients:

• pasta
• large ziploc bag (I used gallon size)
• food coloring
• vinegar or alcohol
• wax paper

Instructions:

1. Add a few cups of pasta to your ziploc bag.
2. Next, add about 10-12 drops of food coloring and about 1 tbsp of vinegar. (You can use alcohol but I prefer to use vinegar so that it's safe for the preschoolers that decide to put it in their mouth.)
3. Close the ziploc and stir up the pasta to mix around the food coloring. You can let the noodles sit in the food coloring for a little while if you'd like a deeper color. (I didn't let mine sit and I am pleased with the color.)
4. Dump out your noodles onto wax paper and allow to dry. You can let it dry on newspaper but I used wax paper so that I don't have to worry about the wet noodles drying to the paper.
5. Let the noodles dry overnight. I made our pasta on Friday so that it would have plenty of time to dry over the weekend.

Money saving idea: To cut down on the number of baggies I used, I planned an order for dying my pasta so that I could reuse the bags. For example, I dyed yellow pasta and then used the bag to dye orange pasta. I knew that the orange would involve using the yellow and another color.