Sustainability is a big priority for us at CleverBabi so reducing waste by using recyclable items is a must!

This week I washed out some old soft drink bottles (the 300ml size) to get them ready to make shakers. I wanted the bottles to look the best they could so I wanted to see if I could get the black ‘best before’ date off. Using eucalyptus oil the black printing on the bottle came straight off! It also helped to get the glue from the label off.

I had already made a few different coloured rice batches so I got to work to getting the rice into the bottles. Using a funnel I slowly got the rice in.

I am still pretty new to this rice dyeing thing and am making many mistakes (the best way to learn!). I was nervous about putting the dyed rice straight onto my trays so I put a layer of baking paper in between. BIG MISTAKE! The rice stuck to it which meant I lost most of the rice.

What a waste!

Because of the small entry point the rice struggled getting down the funnel (partly because there were clumps because of the baking paper catastrophe). As always, I couldn’t find what I was looking for to get it down (a skewer) so I improvised and used a beating whisk. It worked so problem solved.

Next I got to making more coloured rice. I tend to flit between using water or vinegar, depending on my mood and for this batch I put a bit of water in the bag with the rice and dye. There really is no specific recipe. You cant really get it wrong!

I had already made the yellow rice and wanted to make some orange. I don’t like waste so I reused the zip lock bag I used to make the yellow to then make the orange.

The red and yellow food dye mixed well to make orange. It was then popped into a tray to dry out.

I also made blue rice today. I tried making it without any additional fluid (water or vinegar) and it turned out like this. The blue didn’t grab every rice granule and gave a multi toned effect which I actually love.

The final product is this beautiful rainbow set of recycled shakers.

Thanks for reading.

Amy xx