From DIY Glitter Fail to Coloured Sand

One of my pet peeves when it comes to doing certain crafts with my kiddies is the cost of some of the craft supplies. This does not appear to be as much of a problem for the fortunate folks in America who pick up fabulous deals for a couple of bucks, but here... some things are nearly impossible to get your hands on (wooden blank discs, freezer paper, Lakeshore Learning products, etc), and some are just expensive.
Glitter is one of the latter.
Shopping at The Reject Shop or Sam's Warehouse may cut craft costs in a lot of other ways, but even there two little vials of fine glitter (the size of your thumb) will set you back $3. Considering how much glitter kids like to use, I'd need to buy about half a dozen vials for a single project... that's $9 worth of glitter! You've got to be kidding me!
So, when I saw a post on Pinterest about DIY glitter, I got so excited!!
The image attached to the post showed beautiful, fine, sparkling glitter, vibrantly coloured - which MUST have been an image of commercial glitter, because it does not turn out that way. For anyone, it seems: I have since read quite a few posts from other people who attempted to make their own glitter, and garnered the same disappointing results as us.
However, it did make some nice coloured sand! (Lemons and lemonade, and all that jazz.)

Now, onto the recipe for coloured sand (not glitter!!)...


You'll need:

• 1/4 cup non-iodised salt
• liquid food colouring in the colour of your choice

                          

Simply colour the salt by adding the food colouring. Be sure to use liquid food dye as the paste variety may smoke in the oven.

Stir the colour through the salt as evenly as possible, smushing out any lumps with the back of a spoon. 

Spread onto a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake in a low oven (ours was set to 150 degrees celcius) for about 10 minutes, but keep an eye on it. If you want to do a few colours at once, try using a muffin pan. We lined ours with baking paper and put small amounts of the various colours in the muffin-bits, and it worked quite well.

Allow to cool, and store in an airtight container for up to 2 months.

Why go through all this trouble when you could just use coloured sand? If you have access to coloured sand, by all means use that! However, not everyone has play sand at home, and that's where this recipe comes in handy. Also, this has a little more shimmer and the texture is a bit finer.
Coloured sand (bought or made) is a great medium for use in small world play scenes, sensory tubs, filling decorative bottles, making works of art ... and whatever else you can come up with!

Happy playing! ~ L.







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