Craft: Home-made Play dough

I made some play dough last week. It was so easy and fun to make. The result is so satisfying, not only it's better than the "Playdough" you buy at the stores, it smells better too. =D

I even managed to salvage the drying bought ones and revived them by kneading the old and new together. The almost dried play dough took a lot of work to knead together though. I had to crumble bits of them into the new play dough and knead longer. But the result was like brand new ones. Now Sean can play as much and waste as much as he wants because I can make more whenever he runs out.

Recipe:
1/2 cup fine salt
1 cup flour
1 tbsp cream of tartar
1 tbsp oil
1 cup warm water
food coloring and essences

Revised instruction:
Dissolve the salt in the water in a saucepan. Add cream of tartar, oil and essence. Put the saucepan over a small fire and add the flour a little at a time. Stir continuously until it clumps into a ball. Remove from heat and knead. Use a little flour while kneading to lessen the stickiness.

If you're making one color, you can add the food coloring in the saucepan. Otherwise, take a batch and add the food coloring a little at a time, and knead the color into the dough.

Be careful with the coloring if you don't want to have colorful hands. I had colors all over my hand because I wasn't careful while mixing the colors. It took 2 days to wash away. So if you have disposable gloves, use them. Just make the primary colors: red, blue and yellow. you can knead other colors from these. It's a great color teaching tools for older toddlers.

I used vanilla and banana essences. They smell really good. =D

Additional Note:

Leave the new dough in air for a while and re-knead once in a while. If you keep them inside containers too soon, they get too soft and soggy.

Use flour to knead until you reach the consistency that you like. If you keep inside closed container for too long, it gets too soft. So open the container once in a while.

Just to add:
The reason my previous playdough was so soft is because I forgot to add the oil!!!!. So remember to add the spoonful of oil. If you forget, just take a bit of oil and knead into your dough. It should work as well.