Oodles of Noodles to dry!

We had lots of fun at summer camp painting pasta to make necklaces. But what do you do with all the wet painted pasta so it can dry? Place them on another noodle - a pool noodle that is! With so many kids, (around 80) and so many  pasta noodles, I needed to come up with a way to keep their pasta from rolling away while they waited two days for us to meet again, to string them. Buying individual foam pieces would have been costly, so one day while I was at the Dollar Store checkout, I noticed the pool noodles outside the front window on display. It got me thinking, that those were made of foam, I wondered if they would work. So I purchased just one pool noodle, took it home and cut it into 100 pieces (steak knife works best with teeth). I inserted 5 toothpicks in each ring and set them on the tables when the kids walked in. 

At first they thought the craft was the blue noodle rings, but once they got started painting the pasta and putting them on the little drying racks, they went to town, and made some really impressive creations. We used acrylic paint and q-tips to add dots and details. The drying racks worked perfectly for our needs and they had a great time!