Making your own colorful works of art is fun and easy to do, especially for kids. By simply layering different colors of salt, sand, or chalk on top of one another, you can create a beautifully unique piece of art. The ingredients needed to make sand art can be found in most any household. Here are some basic ingredients and materials that you will need to get started:
What you will need to make your own sand art jar:
• Clear plastic bottle or jar with lid
• Colored chalk
• Sandpaper
• Bowls or bags
• Salt
• Spoon
• Paper
• Pencil (or even a stick would work)
• Ribbon
This particular sand art jar will incorporate different filler materials, chalk and salt. You could also use colored sand that you might find at a craft store. Or you could try your hand at coloring sand or sugar yourself. Here is how to start the sand art jar project. Remove any labels that may be on the jar or container that you plan on using by soaking the bottle in warm soapy water and them pealing or scratching off any excess paper. To make colored “sand” from salt, grind a half-stick of colored chalk against sandpaper into a bowl, and mix in ¼ of salt. Make several colors, each in its own bowl. Another option to coloring salt is to use a few drops of food coloring. Pour the salt and the food coloring into a bag and mix the coloring into the salt by using your fingers (on the outside of the bag).
Once you have whatever colored granulated item you plan to use on the inside of the jar, spoon layers of colored “sand” through a funnel into the bottle. If you do not have a funnel you can use a rolled up piece of paper or make a funnel by poking a hole into a paper coffee filter. To make more interesting designs in the layers of sand in your jar, you can use a blunt object (like the pencil or a stick) to push the sand down, making designs into the layers.
Put the lid on the bottle, and add a ribbon to the neck of the bottle. Remember not to shake the bottle or all of your colors will blend together and you will be left with a multi-colored mess.
Be sure to keep your sand art bottle away from little ones. Eating the colored sand or chalk could seriously harm you even if you use salt and food coloring accidentally eating the salt could make you sick. So be sure to not use the salt on food after mixing it with chalk. You could glue the lid onto the jar to ensure that it is not accidentally opened and use a plastic jar instead of a glass one in case it falls. This way, not only do you keep the sand in the jar, but you also avoid the hazard of broken glass.
Subsequent sand art projects can involve more creativity if you wish. You could introduce a number of different items into your sand art jar. For example, you can use marbles, shells, pasta pieces or any other small objects as layers in your sand art jar. You could even make a sand art jar out of totally edible materials. One example is to use colored candies and layer them in a jar the same way that you would layer different colors of sand in the jar. You can use bigger jars for larger pieces of candy. If you want to get the same salt look in an edible craft, try using pixie stick sugar. It looks just like the sand but tastes a lot better!
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