I know that many people love to roast and eat pumpkin seeds (as do we!), but if you have a lot of pumpkins around like we do, you won't mind sacrificing a bit of seeds for this project. You can also use butternut squash seeds (they're smaller, but should still make a nice effect, saving your larger and tastier pumpkin seeds for eating!)
The first thing you'll want to do is rinse and then dry your seeds. It can take a couple of days for the seeds to dry.
Dying the seeds is easy. All you need is dried pumpkin seeds, food coloring, and vinegar. Place 1/4 to 1/2 cup water in small cups. Add a TBS of vinegar, and several drops of food coloring to the cups. Allow the dried seeds to soak in the colored water for 2 to 4 hours, then remove them from the water & allow them to dry over night. You then have a colorful, natural, free, craft item. You can make mosaics or necklaces with them. Some will dye a solid color & others will be speckled. Use a nice heavy paper like poster board or card stock to glue the mosaics to.Remember, you can mix the colors to create other colors (another fun activity to let children see the color combinations right before their eyes).
What a cool idea! Me? I eat, eat, eat those seeds! Muauahaha! I'm like Cookie Monster when it comes to pumpkin seeds.
ReplyDeleteBut I think the rainbow of colors you can dye them for art is really cool.
This is a really cool project, if there are any that are not eaten. LOL
ReplyDelete(((HUGS)))
This is a gorgeous idea! Now to go and get another pumpkin b/c we already ate up all our seeds!
ReplyDeletelisa