Introduction: Colorful Holiday Rice Decorations

About: Former Instructables employee CHECK OUT MY WORK www.carleyjacobson.com

I was inspired by these colorful rice creations to make my own colorful decorations for the holidays. You can make so many different holiday decorations.  For Halloween I made a Happy Halloween sign to hang in the office.  This Thanksgiving make turkeys, pilgrims, and other fun designs!

Check out this tutorial to use colorful rice to make coasters.

Step 1: Materials

White Rice
Food Coloring - In this tutorial I used icing food coloring, it is like a gel, but I have also used the regular liquid food coloring for this.
Wax Paper
Vinyl Fabric - you can buy this at any fabric store, if you dont want to buy it then use a plastic zip lock bag as your vinyl fabric
Sewing Machine
Paper
- to make the pattern for the decorations
String
Grommets and Grommet Pliers

Step 2: Coloring Rice

Here is a great tutorial on how to dye the rice, but I can give you the basic run down of what worked best for me.

Put rice in a bowl.

When adding the food coloring you want to add a couple teaspoons of water so the color spreads evenly.

Mix it all together until all the rice in the bowl is the same color.

Once you've reached the desired color lay the rice out on a piece of wax paper. Leave the rice out until it is completely dry.

TIPS for getting desired color of rice:

Fade Color:
1.add more water to the bowl which will wash some of the dye off the rice and lighten the color.
2. Add more rice to the bowl: one drop of blue dye for one cup of rice will be darker than one drop of blue dye in two cups of rice...makes sense

Darker Color
1. More dye and less water: drain the water from the bowl 

Step 3: Sewing Letters

1. Print out letters or pictures you want to turn into a rice decoration
2. Cut out letters
3. Fold the vinyl fabric over so it is double layered
4. Pin the paper letters to vinyl fabric and cut the letters out (you should have two vinyl cut outs of the letters)
5. Pin the vinyl cut outs together and sew them together with sewing machine leaving a portion of the letter open to put the rice in.

Step 4: Adding Rice

Use a spoon to scoop rice into the vinyl fabric decoration.  Once it is filled with rice add pins to the top of the decoration to make sure no rice comes out and sew the opening closed with the sewing machine.

Step 5: Hanging Rice

Now that the letters are sealed shut, use the grommet pliers to attach grommets to the tops of the decorations so you can hang them.

Put string through the grommet holes and hang the decorations from the ceiling!

Halloween Contest

Participated in the
Halloween Contest