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Writer's pictureketaki haldipurkar

Artwork - Pasta necklace

Make food safe colored pasta necklace.



At toddler stage as most kids end up putting things in their mouth I found a kid friendly way to color pasta with all edible ingredients.

All kids love pasta. We got these wheel shaped pasta for Bubu because of his obsession with vehicles. He ate it at first but eventually got bored of it. I had quite a bit of it left. I looked up online, most of the tutorial to color pasta were using alcohol. At toddler stage as most kids end up putting things in their mouth I found a kid friendly way to color pasta with all edible supplies. Here is how you do it.


Let's make it

You will need

  1. Pasta

  2. Vinegar

  3. Food colors - Only primary colors -red, blue, yellow. There is a reason for that, hold on.

  4. String - wool, bakers twine, twine something thick so your Bubu can handle it easily

  5. Small bowls - around six


Day 1 | Color mixing | Time: 20 mins

  • Add 1 - 2 table spoons of vinegar to all the seven bowls. Your Bubu can also help with this, it will be messy but Bubu's love to help. I asked him to hold my hand and help to make it less messy.

  • Now we mixed three food colors red, blue, yellow to make six different colors. This is a great activity for your Bubu to experience the mixing of primary color, to make secondary colors.

  • In the first bowl, add 10 drops of red food color.

  • In the second bowl, add 10 drops of yellow food color and 3 drops of red. Mix it with a stirrer to make orange.

  • In the third bowl, add 10 drops of yellow food color.

  • In the fourth bowl, add 10 drops of yellow food color and 5 drops of blue. Mix it with a stirrer to make green.

  • In the fifth bowl, add 10 drops of blue food color.

  • In the sixth bowl, add 5 drops of blue food color and 5 drops of red. Mix it with a stirrer to make purple.

  • Add 3 to 6 pasta in each bowl.


Day 1 | Prep: 5 mins

  • Let it soak for 2 hours.

  • Here I will like to admit we had a fail. I soaked it overnight thinking I will get a rich strong color. That made the pasta brittle. After completely drying it started cracking even if we touched it. :(

  • Dry it completely using kitchen towel. It should feel like dried pasta. It may take 24 hours.


Day 2 | Stringing | Time: 20 mins

Ask your Bubu to sting the colored pasta, using the string you chose. This activity is really good for hand-eye-coordination and pencil grip.


We made another one as our colored pasta necklace failed as it was too brittle. We had only seven pasta remaining. Bubu was very upset that his long awaited pasta necklace was crumbling.

I had to come up with a more instant DIY, as I don't think Bubu had the patience to color and wait for the pasta to dry. So we turned to glitter. I asked Bubu to paint the pasta with Modge-podge and then he sprinkled glitter. We let it dry overnight. Next day I added a layer or two of Modge-podge to seal the glitter in place. Bubu strung the pasta in our transparent twine. Our much awaited "wheel necklace" as Bubu calls it was ready.


We took both the necklace for the Friday show-and-tell, though the first one was a fail. After all it took quite some work and a lot of waiting + patience during the drying time to make our brittle necklace too. I think it was a good learning for Bubu. He was very excited to make wheel necklace. He just could not wait for the end result. When we started to string the colored pasta it started to crack. Obviously he was upset but he experienced that things may not turn out perfect every time and you have to iterate with whatever little supplies you have remaining. We had fun making both and we love & are proud of both too.


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