You can make fun and easy Mardi Gras beads for your kids Mardi Gras Celebration with Salt dough. You can make these beads for just about any kid's celebration too.

You'll Need:

o 2 cups of plain flour

o 1 cup of salt

o 1 cup of water

o oven

o acrylic paint

o knife

o board

o rolling pin

o paintbrushes

o baking tray

o aluminum foil or wax paper

To start with you'll need to mix up your salt dough. Pour the two cups of flour into a bowl with one cup of salt and one cup of water. Mix with your hands until the dough is entirely moistened and sticks together. It should be like pizza dough easy to mold without it sticking to your hands. You'll see the little grains of salt in the dough.

Once the dough is made you can begin making the beads. Take the aluminum foil or wax paper and roll a sheet into a small tube shape so that it looks like a straw. Next roll out a sheet of the dough with the rolling pin until it's fairly thin. Gently roll a piece of this sheet around the foil tube. Cut with the knife to separate the dough wrapped around the tube from the rest of the dough sheet. Press the cut edge so that it's sticking to the tube. Next use your knife to cut the dough wrapped around the aluminum tube into small sections about the size of the width of Mardi Gras beads.

When the dough is cooked it should harden enough that you'll be able to pull each of the sections off the aluminum tube and end up with your Mardi Gras beads with a nice hole through them for stringing. Place the dough wrapped tube into the oven at 212 degrees Fahrenheit for about half an hour. When it's done and cooled gently pull off the bead sections.

You can now paint them with your acrylic paint in bright colors and string it together.