How to Dye Pasta

For your Fourth Of July barbecue or your Christmas pary, keep the kids entertained with cheap and easy crafts and projects made from dyed macaroni and pasta. Make jewelry, sculptures, pictures and much more and keep the kids entertained while they wait for the big day to begin.

Things You'll Need

• Assorted macaroni and pasta shapes
• Sealable freezer bags
• Food coloring
• Rubbing alcohol
• Wax paper

Instructions

1. Fill freezer bags with assorted shapes and sizes of macaroni so that you have a good variety in each bag. Put down newspapers or table cloth to avoid any stray messes.

2. Pick out the colors you want to dye your macaroni shapes. For the Fourth of July, use red, blue, green, and plain for our dyes. For Christmas, you could use red and green.

3. Add about 1 tsp. rubbing alcohol to each bag of macaroni and several drops of food coloring desired to each bag depending on how much pasta you are looking to dye. Make sure the bag is securely closed and shake so that the coloring and alcohol sufficiently cover all of your macaroni.

4. Make sure that the macaroni is sufficiently covered to your satisfaction and let the bags sit closed for about fifteen minutes. This will allow the dye to soak into the pasta further and make deeper richer colors.

5. Lay out a dry kid and pet safe area for your macaroni to dry overnight. Use large sheets of wax paper on cookie dough sheets and shake out the pasta to dry, dispersing large groups so that you have some breathing room between pieces. The alcohol will evaporate overnight leaving just the neat colored pasta that you can use for crafts, decoration, or even a festive addition to to your famous noodle salad.

6. The alcohol will evaporate overnight leaving just the neat colored pasta that you can use for crafts, decoration, or even a festive addition to to your famous noodle salad. Happy Fourth of July!

Tips & Warnings

• Don't over-saturate the macaroni with too alcohol or food coloring as this may make it hard for the dye to stick to the noodles and take longer to dry.\nTry to get plain colored noodles to dye, as the yellow coloring in most Italian macaroni noodles will slightly affect the hue of the noodle.\nUse rubbing alcohol instead of water, as the alcohol will evaporate and the water will mix with the flour in the pasta and make your noodles soggy and take longer to dry.

• Keep all food coloring and dyes away from children,pets, and clothing as much as possible because it will stain clothes and fabrics and can be a huge pain to clean up!\nLeaving the noodles in the coloring overnight inside of the baggies will make a very rich dark color, but this will take twice as long to dry, so plan accordingly!

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish