Craft Idea from a Reader

Thanks so much to Dawn Curtis awesome Memphis Mommy reader who sent me this great idea for a VBS craft! Do you have any craft ideas to share(please e-mail me)? This is a great one!!!

With Summer fast approaching, Vacation Bible School planning is well under way. For all those who are looking for frugal crafts for a large number of kids, here is a good one: Colored Sand Art!

Colored sand can be used to fill empty water bottles for decoration. It can also be sprinkled over glue to make creative pictures! Buying enough colored sand for a day care center or a large VBS group can be very costly; however, with a little bit of time you can make it much cheaper! A few years ago I made colored sand for my church's family camp. Turns out that what I thought was enough for one year is actually enough for several years!! This is how I did it:

What you need:

1 empty paint bucket with lid,er color (I bought pickle buckets from Firehouse Subs for $2 ea. ...yep, the sand STILL smells like pickles!!)

3 or more colors of RIT dye (liquid in the bottle preferably)

A few large waterproof tarps or dropcloths

Lots of Sand (For best results, buy 1 bag of playground sand per color at Lowes for around $2.50 per bag)... since I was being really cheap, I bought building sand from a local contractor. It was like $5 for all the sand I needed, but there were tiny rocks in the sand.

***Do this all outside of your home, not inside***

1. In each bucket pour one bottle of dye and add water to fill the bucket 1/4.
2. Add sand to fill the bucket almost full.
3. Add more water until it is about 2 inches above the sand.
4. Put the lid on the bucket.
5. Do this for each color you are making.
6. Let the buckets sit for a couple of days.
7. Drain each bucket by dumping as much colored water as possible out.
8. Then dump the wet sand out onto a tarp.
9. Rake the sand out so it is spread evenly over the tarp.
10. Rake the sand a couple times for the next day until it is completely dried out.
11. Put dry sand back into it's bucket.

Done! In the meantime, have people save their empty water bottles for you so you can fill them with sand. You can find really cheap funnels online - usually on Oriental Trading's website. Also, if you are able to save the remaining liquid from the sand you might be able to mix the left overs to make other colors. Finally, if you do not need a lot of each color of sand you can do this in plastic gladware with lids ... using less sand per bottle of dye will give you a more vibrant color when it's all done.

**One more idea: If you are planning to tye-dye shirts anyway, you can use the left over dye to dye sand!! That's a 2-for-1!!

THANK YOU DAWN!!!!

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