Over the last couple of months my daughter has found a new obsession. Morning, noon & night you can find her at our coffee table buried up to her elbows in Play-Doh. She has become quite creative with her dough. There are so many possibilities. The fun is endless. Check out our list of fun Play-Doh activities this week at Seek Magazine.
The only problem with Play-Doh, is that we go through it so quickly. It is not always convenient or cost effective for me to run out to the store to buy more, so I often make it at home. I have tried many different recipes. I have made it cooked, uncooked, with hair conditioner, with Jello, but my favorite one is a recipe I found on Instructables.
There is a lot that you can do with a basic play dough recipe. You can add different colors, spices, scented oils and various textures. My daughter is in a sparkly phase. She likes to wear her sparkle tutu everyday & her sparkle shoes & she loves playing with glitter. We decided to mix our dough with glitter. Mai called it sparkletastic play dough.
It looked so pretty after we were through with it. It looked so festive. One of the activities that was on our play dough activities list was making Christmas ornaments. So that is just what we did.
Snowflake ornament
I rolled out a circle about 3″ around. I pressed a felt snowflake into my circle to make an imprint.
Use the back side of a spoon & press in all the way around to form a snowflake shape. Pull the felt piece out of the middle of the ornament.
Use a straw to poke a hole in your ornament where you would like your string to go. You may have to lift the ornament up so that the straw goes all the way through.
Let dry to harden. This might take a couple of days depending on the thickness of the ornament. Do not bake as the glitter will melt & cause the ornament to explode. Add a ribbon or string.
Family Hearts Ornament
Using a cookie cutters cut out three heart shaped ornaments. If you have 3 different sized heart cutters use the 3 different sizes. If you do not, use the same sized cutter & just spread out 2 of the hearts to form larger hearts so that you have three in increasing sizes.
Poke a hole into the smallest heart at the top center part of your heart. For the larger two hearts poke a hole in the top center & bottom center.
Let the hearts dry & harden for a day or two. Using a ribbon or string, string your 3 hearts together with the largest on top & the other 2 dangling beneath in descending order.
Using a marker or paint, write your names onto each heart.
You may also paint your ornaments after hardening. Mai is very excited to put up the tree in a couple of weeks & now we have some new lovely ornaments for our tree.
13 comments
I totally made Play Dough ornaments as a kid and you just so brought me back! And as much as I have banned Play Dough in our house, because of the mega mess the girls made back last summer (yes even made it into a book), might have to cave and let them try this. Thanks for sharing 🙂
Lol! We had a little Play-doh meltdown with the glitter dough because she spilt her juice all over the first batch . We had run out of flour and it was too late to go out and get some. She was devastated. I do not think it compares with your meltdown. Lol! Poor mama. Play-doh has traumatized you. At least it gave you a great topic for your book.
Thanks is so nice, at what age do you think we can start with this? I want to introduce, but worried boeta is still too young at 17m.
I don’t think it is too early to try it. He may not have the dexterity to roll or use the cutters or maybe he will, but I bet he will love squishing up the Play-doh with mommy. If he finger paints, you can always let him finger paint his own ornament too or make handprint ornaments as a nice keepsake. We have a few of those. I can’t get enough of their little hands and piggy toes. 🙂
Still sticking everything in his mouth, one of the reasons we held off till now.
Oh yeah! I remember those days. I used to make my finger paints out of Cool Whip and food coloring. I actually have a Cool Whip painting of her hanging in my hallway. They were edible and didn’t drip or splat much because of the consistency. Homemade dough is all edible ingredients. I would just opt for a salt free recipe because it does typically call for a lot of salt. But there is plenty of time for all of that. If not this year there is always next year and before you blink it will be here. Where does the time go?
Like the whip idea…
I will have to try this with my son. He will love making playdoh ornaments 🙂
We made a bunch of them. Some we painted, some we let bare with just the flecks of glitter. I am excited to hang them on the tree.
I love it, Mai your the bomb xo! Great share.
Lol! Mai says thank you Mari.
The glitter really looks lovely! I’ll have to try that!
It really does. It does not look nearly as pretty in the photos as in person.