Have you ever seen glorious coloured sand that costs a fortune? Well, you can learn how to make your own at home and it costs a fraction of the price.
Making your own coloured sand gives you the ability to explore and play with it as much as you like. You can use it to make decorative coloured sand bottles or in a heap of other ways too!
Making coloured sand is actually REALLY easy!
What you’ll need:
- Â A bowl
- Food colouring dye. I used this Queen food colouring but I’ve heard this is a good alternative outside of Australia.
- Sand (any sand would work but white is best)
- A tray
- A cloth that you don’t mind coloured or destroyed. We used an old tea towel
- Water
 How to make coloured sand
1. Â Add some sand to a bowl
2. Fill the bowl with water until the sand is all wet. It shouldn’t be runny, just wet.
3. Add the food colouring to the bowl and mix until you have an even colour. You will need a good amount of food colouring. The more you add the darker your sand will be.
4. Â Scoop the sand out onto the tray covered with a tea towel (or whatever you’ve decided to use). The colouring does seep through the material, so if you’re using a tray that could get stained, I’d put plastic in between the tray and the material.
5. Do step 1-4 to make as many colours as you would like. We used red, blue, green and yellow but if you mix the colouring in the bowl you can get heaps of different colours and shades.
5. Take the tray out in the sun and let the sand dry.
6. Scoop the dry sand into separate containers.
So easy! We have lots of activities to share in the coming weeks showing how we explored sand as a play tool. We had a lot of fun!
Coloured Sand Activities
Colored sand can get expensive! I’m going to try this way instead!
I can never justify the price to buy coloured sand so we will be making our own.
Thanks Penny & can’t wait to see how you use it
Must try with my kids too!
You always have the greatest activities. Can’t wait to try this one.
Gee, that is so incredibly easy! My hubby just purchased some new sand for my little girls sand box. I’ll be using a bit for this activity. Thanks Penny.
Oh, this is gorgeous Penny!
We adore sand and coloured sand especially. We DIY with food colouring too 🙂 Looking forward to seeing how you explore this fun material!
Wow that looks so easy and fun. Now just need to get to the beach for some sand!
WOW! You think I would have know how to make coloured sand after all these years, but I didn’t. THANK YOU for sharing.
I love this but would love to know how long it lasts? The sand does not go mouldy after a period of time?
It only goes moldy if it gets wet and doesn’t dry out quickly. 🙂