Macaroni and other pastas can be used to make many things other than a tasty dinner. Creativity and a good imagination can allow you to make almost any kind of craft out of pasta. Macaroni is one of the most popular and well known types of pasta and can be used for many different crafts. One of the most exciting crafts it can be used for is to make macaroni animals. Here is some more information on the animals you can make with macaroni and how to do it.
To begin with, you will need the proper supplies to make your macaroni animals. Macaroni is, of course, the main ingredient and pipe cleaners are also very important for giving the animals the shapes you are looking for. Making these macaroni animals is fast, easy and can be done by anyone in the family. You can use many different types of pasta, but the only ones that will really work will have holes inside or will be hollow so you can thread the pipe cleaner through them. Other common pastas like spaghetti and fettuccine will not work for this project.
When you are choosing the pipe cleaners you will use, keep in mind that parts of the pipe cleaner will probably be showing and so it should be a color that coordinates with the animal that you are making. If you are going to be making a pink pig, a green pipe cleaner is probably not the right color to use to put it all together. Make these and related decisions in advance so that you don’t have to spend extra time and effort redoing things or taking them apart.
One of the most popular and easiest animals to make is a basic house cat. Start the project by taking the pipe cleaner and threading the pasta that will be the torso of the cat onto it. Wagon wheel pasta works great for fat bellies and torsos and rigatoni works well for leaner ones, so either of these can be a good one to start with. When you have the proper size for the torso, bend the pipe cleaner to form a neck and a tail on either side of the body. When you have made the head and tail and tied the pipe cleaners off at the ends or twisted them so that they pasta stays on, then you can add other body parts. When you are ready to attach ears, legs and other body parts, just take a smaller length of pipe cleaner and twist it around the body so it stays in place and the thread it with macaroni. With the cat, you will want to make sure that you have a good tail, ears and legs that the cat can stand on. One of the great things about this craft is that you can make the animals pose in various different positions. You can make your cat stand up on its back legs or lounge around. The possibilities you have with these little macaroni animals are almost endless.
When you are satisfied with the general shape of your animal and feel like it bends in all of the ways you thought it should, you can start adding color and detail. Most kinds of pasta will absorb and retain color from a marker. Colored pencils and crayons will not work well for coloring the animals you make, but the markers will help you make your own statement with the animal. You can try to make it as realistic as possible and use colors that are similar to those you would find in real life, or you can make a dramatic statement and make your macaroni animals wild and crazy colors to get attention. You can make many other animals with macaroni and other pastas and you are only limited by your imagination.