Not Your Mother's Mac & Cheese
Apr 04 '01
The Bottom Line A great, easy and fun project for birthday parties or rainy weekends. Simple and rewarding - get your little artists started now!
Living with a picky eater isn’t an easy thing. For a few weeks my son would only eat Scooby Doo Macaroni & Cheese. This translated to me buying about 20 boxes a week – and when he suddenly changed his mind and liked the Pokeman ones better I was left with about 13 boxes of Scooby Mac & Cheese on the shelf. No one else in the household will even look at Mac & Cheese – let alone eat it. So I had to choose between tossing it or donating it to a food drive. Then it dawned on me – there has to be some craft use for the cool little uncooked pastas.
I decided to rummage through my craft closet and see what odds and end’s I had laying around. I found some small clear acrylic picture frames and that’s when I got the idea to make some Scooby Doo picture frames. All I needed was some spray sealer, acrylic paint and four little helping hands.
The picture frames are nothing special – ones I picked up at Wal-Mart for about $1.50 a piece – some are vertical and some horizontal and most hold standard 3 x 5 and 5 x 7 pictures. The spray sealer is about $3.00 per can and can be found at any home repair store, craft store or paint store.
What You Need
Acrylic Picture Frames
Acrylic Paints [I use Apple Barrel and Fleer]
Scooby Doo Macaroni & Cheese [Kraft has the best shapes]
Craft Glue
Extras: plastic Scooby Doo buttons, glitter, beads or ribbon.
Start by picking out the pieces that you want to use. In the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese box you’ll find Scooby Doo, Shaggy, The Mystery Machine, a dog bone and a mystery piece – the ghost face. Pick out the colors you want to paint them – I use old egg cartons and pour small amounts of paint in the egg wells to avoid having bottle of pain open – thus eliminating a possible spill. Paint the top half of the shape and allow it to dry – this way you avoid having the shapes stick to the paper or table covering. When they are dry flip them over and paint the other side. I have a small reading lamp (clip on style) that I put the pasta pieces under to aid in the drying process.
Once they are completely dry taken them outside and lay them on a large piece of cardboard. Spray the pieces with the sealer making sure you hold the can about ten inches away to avoid over spraying. If you over spray them it will cause some of the colors to run and bleed. Don’t worry if this happens. Allow the first coat to dry about ten minutes then flip them over and repeat the process. An adult should only do this part.
When you have allowed the pieces to dry that’s when the real fun starts. Make sure your frames are clean and dry – if plastic stickers or price tags were on the frame make sure you clean them off or the craft glue will not bond with the frame.
To apply the pasta, beads or other findings simply dip the bottoms of the object into the craft glue and position it on the frame. I showed the boys how to lay out their design before hand so they didn’t get confused when they started assembling it.
We found an old Blues Clues stamper and put little paw prints around the sides of the frames and allowed them to dry – this was so much fun and so easy. We used cobalt blue acrylic paint and dipped the stamper into the paint and did a few test impressions on paper before we found the right amount of paint. Too much and you wouldn’t see the design – it would be a big glob of blue – too little and it looked faded and washed out.
My kids absolutely loved making the frames – they added alphabet beads and made them for a few friends as well as making a few Happy Birthday ones. One box of the Scooby Doo Macaroni & Cheese can make well over 15 frames and can be a great craft project for a birthday party however I suggest that you pre-paint and seal them to cut down on the amount of time involved for the children.
You can apply a light coating of the sealer over the applied pieces if you like but cover the main piece of the frame face to avoid getting sealer on it. I like to look over the frames and apply craft glue to areas that might break or need reinforcement. You can apply the extra glue with a toothpick, brush or straight from the bottle. I keep one bottle of craft glue just for this purpose and have only snipped the very top of the plastic nozzle so a fine line of glue beads out.
I crunched the numbers and came up with the total amount of the project at about $24.00 for 14 frames [some I had gotten on sale], 1 box of Scooby Doo Macaroni & Cheese, 1 can of sealer, 6 bottles of acrylic paint [usually .99 cents - $1.25 each], beads, buttons and paintbrushes. That’s really not that bad for the amount of fun the kids had, the finished products and the miles of smiles they got when they gave them to friends.
I hope you give this a try; Kraft has a wide variety of pasta shapes including Blue’s Clues, Pokeman, Power Puff Girls and Digimon. The boys had a great time making these and took a lot of pride in their handy work. This could also be a great rainy day project of you have the pasta pre-painted and sealed.
As always, thanks for the read! ^V^ Freak ^V^
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