Homemade Hawaiian Lei

Aloha!! :)

Right now me and the hubbs are vacationing, but I wanted to share some fun Hawaiian-themed activities we did last week.

The kids kept asking me where Hawaii was, and what it was like there, so I thought it would be fun to forget the cold and winter for a week and teach them all about Hawaii! They had a great time and I LOVED this craft. It is a combo of a few different ideas I had seen, and it came together just as I had hoped. Here are our Homemade Hawaiian Leis!

I LOVE how they turned out! I'll walk you through how we made these...starting with the funky colored noodles!

I found on THIS blog a post about dying pasta to use for beads. I have had it pinned for a while and was excited to finally give it a go! I used penne pasta for the spacers inbetween the flowers and opted to dye the noodles and then just have white flowers...I love the effect!

It was super easy to color the pasta, all you do is mix 2 TBSP rubbing alcohol in a plastic bag. Then add your food coloring...I doubled what she recommends :) I wanted those colors to POP :) Then you add 1 C of pasta to your bag and shake until completely coated. After that you spread your pasta out on a cookie sheet to try and then you have your own hand-dyed beads! Seriously...people are SO smart! I am never buying beads for kids crafts again!

Once our noodles were all ready to go I simply used a large flower punch to create the white flowers, hole punched them in the center, and then we started stringing!

Here is a close-up of the first one we made together. I love activities like this because you have something usable to play with after, its great to work on colors and patterns with your kids, and its just plain fun! :)

Here's Kendall rocking her lei...they were so cute in them! You could make bracelets or anklets as well.

These would be fun party favors or crafts to do at any type of Luau or Hawaiian-themed party, and after a little bit of prep they are actually quite simple :)

Thanks for checking out our Homemade Leis, I hope your having a wonderful week and check back soon for more Hawaiian themed fun! :)