How to Decorate Rain Sticks With Paint

As the next rainy day activity for your kids, create musical and whimsical rain sticks. Just seal dried beans or rice inside a cardboard paper towel tube, then let the kids get creative and use paint to decorate the instrument with pretty or funky designs.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Paper towel tube
• Dried beans or rice
• Cardstock
• Scissors
• Double-stick tape or glue stick
• Paints
• Paintbrushes
• Foam stamps
• Stencils
• Paper towels or bubble wrap
• Glitter or microbeads

1. Measure a piece of cardstock to cover the rain stick. It will be easier to decorate than the dimensional tube and will give you a smoother surface for painting. Wrap the cardstock around the tube, leaving enough overlap to ensure it's completely covered. Measure the length so it completely covers the rain stick.

2. Select a few shades of paint to create a design. Try stripes of different widths, a miniature mural, interesting text, plaids, diagonal lines, waves or even a solid color. Look at photos of authentic and artistic rain stick designs for additional inspiration (see Resources below).

3. Add interest to a solid color by using foam stamps and a contrasting color of paint to create a pattern. You can also splash paint through a stencil or dab it on with a wad of paper towels or bubble wrap. For sparkle, sprinkle the wet paint with glitter or microbeads before it dries.

4. Adhere the paper to the rain stick once your painted design has dried completely.

5. Consider adding more embellishments, such as shapes created with pipe cleaners, fluffy feathers, stickers, paper punches or mini die cuts.

Tips & Warnings

• Use thin coats when painting the paper that will cover your rain stick. If the layers are too thick, the paper will become too stiff to wrap around the tube effectively.

Resources

• Look at authentic designs for inspiration.