Making pasta necklaces is first and foremost an incredible way to add new jewelry to your wardrobe, but it also has the benefit of teaching Baby about shapes and patterns. Add a little food dye, and you’re also working with colors! Pasta necklaces are the craft of all crafts.
What do you need?
The star of the show here is your dry pasta, and while all pasta is amazing, you’re looking for pasta you can run a string through. Penne, rigatoni, manicotti, cavatappi…anything with a little tube shape in the middle will work. Outside of that, you really just need string or yarn.
To take your pasta necklaces to another level, you can add paper towels, a plate or tray, plastic bags, and food coloring to your list. That’s right, you can dye your pasta for a colorful pasta necklace!
What do you do?
If you’re going for the standard pasta necklace, you and Baby just need to come up with a game plan for what you want your necklaces to look like. Do you want the pasta types to alternate to form a pattern, or do you want to use the same kind of pasta for the whole necklace? Maybe you want to go abstract and just let the pasta fall where it may! Cut your string to have a little extra length so you have room to make your necklace as long as you like and still have room to tie a knot at the end. You can also tie a big knot at one end of the string so the pasta doesn’t fall off while you’re assembling the necklace.
If you’re going to dye your pasta, you’ll need to separate your pasta into a few different bags. Each bag will be a different color, but that doesn’t mean they have to all be different types of pasta or that you can’t mix pasta types within the bags. It’s all up to you and Baby! Put a few drops of food coloring in each bag, seal the bags, and shake them until the food coloring is distributed to all the pieces of pasta. Adding a tablespoon of rubbing alcohol can make this a little easier, but it’s not essential. After the pasta is coated, remove it from the bags and place it on a plate or tray lined with paper towels. Once it’s dry, you just have to decide on a pattern and string your pasta onto your yarn or string. Presto pasta!
