coloured sand

This is a quick and easy one tonight.. its already 11.34pm and I am pretty exhausted but thought I would post this quick and easy craft for you :) Arent I just lovely.

I wasnt well yesterday thus I missed a day of blog and today we have entertained again tonight ( 4 nights out of 5 this week!) (crazy) but today I was being asked to do something "fun". So out of the packing boxes came my containers of homemade coloured sand. I made this some time ago but it last for ages so it was still good to go.
Colouring sand is really easy. I do mine with food colouring so its safe to use. Find a container and fill about a quarter with sand ( I use old butter containers) To the sand, add a squirt of food colouring. Now you can have as dark a colour as you want. I start off with a squirt and add to it if it isnt dark enough. The colour will lighten as the sand dries. Lay a kitchen baking tray out and cover the base with the coloured wet sand. You need a fairly even and not too thick layer of sand for this to work properly. Lay in the sun until its completely dry. Break up clumps with a spoon. I put each colour into a different container WITH A LID as it tends to go everywhere! Colours are a bit hard to see but they are green, blue, red and maroon.

To use the sand, I gave Jumeirah and Jared 4 colours of sand, some white glue and a large clear container to "contain" the sand... once I did a free style with this craft and got it on the floor. No big deal until I mopped the floor a few days later and mopped red and blue food colouring all over white grout... not good no.

Both kids love this for different reasons. Jared likes the "sprinkle sprinkle" part of pinching the sand and sprinkling it on the glue, Jumeirah likes the gluing bit best. But they worked together and had lots of fun.

The glue can be used to paint a picture and then add the sand or better yet, let them just drizzle glue all over it and then add sand. Either way it turned out pretty good!