Making Colored Craft Rice

I have been wanting to do a colored sand bottle project with Bee. But, I am not a fan of sand for projects because of the silica dust found in craft sand. Finally, I was able to meld idea together from a colored macaroni bucket activity I had seen in a classroom I visited. I could color rice! The rice could be used for transfer buckets, hide and find bottles, AND colored bottle art (to name a few). If you can dye macaroni, you can dye rice, right?

The web abounds when searching for dyeing items, and even for rice! There were a few places I found that I used for inspiration but either the volume, or the process seemed a bit off. So, below is what I did to color the rice. Here is the summary: Soak rice briefly in colored vinegar, then dry.

What you need:

• Wide Mouth Jars with lids (for as many colors as you plan on using at one time) and big enough to hold the rice. Really any jar will do as long as you are able to get the rice in and out of it.
• Rice (enough for 1 cup of each color you will be doing)
• Food coloring
• Vinegar
• Strainer
• Cookie/baking sheets
• Newsprint

How To:

1. Preheat oven to 170 (or the lowest it will go)
2. Put newsprint on the cookie sheets (I was able to put two colors on a full sheet pan)
3. Pour 1/2 cup Vinegar into a Jar (that has a lid)
4. Drop food coloring drops into the vinegar and swirl to make uniform color. I used 4 drops for each solid color, and then used double the amount called for on the back of the food coloring box for pink (rose), orange, etc.
5. Pour 1 cup of rice into a jar, close the lid and shake until rice is uniform in color.
6. Repeat to do all the colors you plan on making.
7. Take the first container and dump into the strainer. Use a little water to get the rest of the rice grains out of the jar and shake to remove the excess dye/vinegar.
8. Dump the strainer of rice onto the newsprint covered baking sheet and spread out a little by hand. It does not need to be in a single layer, but the more spread out it is the faster it will dry.
9. Once the baking sheet has all the rice you plan on putting on it, place it in the oven.
10. Repeat with all the other dye jars, place on baking sheets and put in the oven.
11. After about 30 minutes pull out the baking sheets and move the rice around a little by hand. At this point you can turn off the oven and let the colored rice sit over night as I did, or keep the oven on until dry.
12. Once dry store in containers until use.

Lessons learned:

Chartreuse is my most favorite color on dyed eggs. This color does not seem to work as well with rice.

Want to make more rice at a time? It Looks like a quart mason jar can hold 2 (or more) cups of rice - the conversion for two cups of rice would be 1 cup of vinegar, 8 drops of solid color or quadruple the color recipe on the back of the box.

The Process in Pictures:Vinegar and color in jars

Rice added to jars

The coloring process

Rice drying in the oven

All done