Multi crafting - coloured salt pictures and marble necklaces

This afternoon when we arrived home after a day at work and preschool, the sun was still out and we felt energetic. So I thought I'd help set the kids up with a colourful craft activity and then also try and finish off a project that I had been working on. The kids' activity was inspired by one of their favourite substances - food colouring. I wrote down their names and sketched out a few simple pictures and then we used salt, coloured with food dye to add colour. This was an interesting change from textas or crayons. We chose four colours and mixed them with plastic spoons in plastic cups which made cleaning up super easy. A dust buster was also handy to deal with all the spilled salt. As suspected, Alex and Jasmine loved mixing the different colours into the salt. It was lovely and easy for them to manage. They also did a great job painting the glue on the letters and pictures I had drawn and sprinkling the salt over the glue with their spoons. They needed a bit of help tipping the excess salt back into the cup for re-use but any accidents didn't matter as we were at the outdoor table. You can see in the photos that the end result isn't too bad and most importantly it was an exciting activity that needed minimal assistance from me. This allowed me time to dedicate to my marble and fabric necklaces.

When the kids had finished up their coloured-salt pictures, they helped me to thread the marbles into the fabric strips I had stitched together. The first part of the necklaces was easy - basically it involves a straight line of stitches, some marbles and knots. The kids found it fun counting the marbles and watching the necklaces form. Adding the ribbon was a little more fiddly but hopefully will hold together well. I like the bright fabrics and they offer a new look, a change from beads.