It?s hard to believe that less than six months ago my son refused to even touch play dough. Now it is his favorite craft activity. I usually have two or three colors of homemade play dough at any one time, but for a playdate I made extra ? and added glitter!
Here is my go-to recipe for homemade play dough:
- ? cup AP flour (plain flour)
- ? cup water
- 2 tbs salt
- 1 tsp cream of tartar
- 2-3 drops food coloring
- EXTRA: loose glitter
Method:
- In a saucepan (preferably nonstick), mix the first four ingredients together so the mixture is as smooth as possible. It is OK if a few little lumps remain. Then add the food coloring and stir to mix thoroughly. Add more coloring if required.?Stir in as much glitter as you would like.
- Heat slowly, stirring regularly. As the mixture starts to thicken, stir constantly. Soon it will begin to start to pull away from the sides of the saucepan and form one lump. This takes about three to five minutes.
- Remove from the heat and place the play dough ball on some parchment paper. Let cool and then knead until it is smooth and soft.
- When completely cool, wrap the dough in the parchment paper and store in a Ziploc bag in the fridge. It lasts for months!
Note: If you want to make several colors then I would recommend doing the heating and stirring part one color at a time – as each dough needs your full attention!
For the glitter dough playdate I first made purple playdough with purple glitter. Then I made pink playdough with silver glitter. At the last minute I made a third batch and didn’t color it at all, but added bright pink glitter. The effect was pretty awesome!
We had a crafty playdate with two girls who I know *love* pink, purple, and all things glittery! They absolutely loved this play dough. I provided some tools and some googly eyes so that they could make animals or monsters. E (5 yrs) made these two creations ? just look at that sparkle!
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L (3.5 yrs) shows us a scary monster. And also one that she made from the dough. ;-)
My son (F) got to play with the ?dough later and made a snake-monster!
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