Pasta Beads

When I found out that the same recipe we used to make Rainbow Rice could be used to make pasta beads I just knew I had to try it!! I made the beads a couple of days before we were going to use them since they take a while to dry. Once they were dry I decided that we would make necklaces out of them! The first time we tried to make the necklaces we used yarn, but it was just too thick to go through the pasta. A couple of days later we tried again with some of the plastic craft lace I picked up at Walmart on one of my shopping trips there. This worked MUCH better! I got the idea here:

http://www.mynameissnickerdoodle.com/2010/02/colors.html

The recipe is simple:
Pasta
2 tablespoons Rubbing Alcohol
Food coloring

*Place in a seperate ziploc bag per color and leave in the bag until you have achieved your desired color. Dry on cookie sheets, stirring occasionally to help the rubbing alcohol evaporate.

In one of my many visits to Pinterest I read about tapping down one end of the string to the table to help make it easier for little fingers to thread their beads. This worked so well!! I definitely recommend it! My almost 3 year-olds twins had a little trouble figuring out what they had to do with their hands to get the beads to stay on the string, but after I helped each of them with the first couple of beads they were soon doing it on their own! They both LOVED their necklaces and wore them proudly for a long time!