Noodle Necklace

Dying the noodles

I read about this craft activity in Kitchen Table Play and Learn, and it turned out really well, so I thought I’d share it with everyone.  Instead of buying beads to string, you can just use uncooked noodles.  But instead of just plain colored noodles, you can dye them.  What you do is just put some rubbing alcohol in a bowl and then add food coloring.  Then add as many noodles as will be covered with the rubbing alcohol.  You let them sit for awhile (I let them sit for 3 hours), and then take them out and let them dry several hours on paper towels.  The colors turned out really bright, and it was cheap and easy.  I used almost one bottle of rubbing alcohol to dye a one-pound box of penne.  I didn’t do it all in one bowl; I used several bowls, so I could do different colors, and I would reuse the dye mixture, so I didn’t have to use a ton of rubbing alcohol.  A few of the bowls I let sit overnight because I forgot about them, and they weren’t any brighter than the ones that sat for a couple of hours.  I didn’t let Stryker help with the dying part because the rubbing alcohol isn’t supposed to be ingested.  But then later, he really liked stringing the noodles onto pipe cleaners.  It was neat to watch him sit quietly and use his fine motor skills, which doesn’t happen very often!  He made a necklace, and then after that, we made “snakes.”

Making noodle necklace