Homemade Play Dough Recipe
Today’s recipe for how to make homemade play dough came about because of a couple other old things in my life – some old crayons and an old recipe. Yes, I still have my 30 year old recipe for how to make your own play dough!
Back before there was Google or Pinterest, I was already making my own play dough for my kids. In fact when I told my daughter I was getting out the old recipe and trying it again she said, “Oh gosh, I can still remember how that stuff smelled!” Not sure if that’s a good memory or not. 🙂
I also had some old broken crayons around and remembered seeing something about how you could use those to color homemade play dough. So I decided to combine my old broken crayons with my old recipe and see if I could come up with some new homemade goodness!
How To Make Your Own Play Dough
I’ve included a photo below of my old recipe. I remember it made a large batch and I only made it in one color. We played with that one big lump of homemade aqua colored play dough many, many, many times back in the day. That original recipe used flour, salt and water, along with some cream of tartar, vegetable oil, and food coloring.
This time around, I’ve updated that original recipe to make a smaller batch so that you can make different colors of play dough in smaller amounts. I’ve also added the option of tinting the mixture with old pieces of coloring crayons.
The recipe that follows is actually 1/4 the size of the original. Also, rather than just dumping all the ingredients together right at the beginning, it heats the liquid ingredients first and then adds in the dry ingredients.
The process goes pretty fast too so it’s a good idea to have all your ingredients ready to go before you head over to the stove. You only need one crayon for each little batch of this updated play dough too (or enough little broken pieces to equal about one crayon).
And of course you could also just color this mixture with food coloring like the original recipe did too. It’s all good.
So if you have some old crayons around, and you have some basic pantry items around too, you can make this homemade play dough in just a few minutes. It’s a fun and easy craft that gives kids lots of creative play time and will give them happy memories they might still remember 30 years later!
Homemade Play Dough
Equipment:
- Small Saucepan
- Wooden spoon or other sturdy stirring utensil
- Wax Paper or Parchment Paper
Materials:
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1/4 cup salt
- 1 tsp cream of tartar (see notes)
- 2/3 cup warm water
- 2 tsp vegetable oil or olive oil
- 1 crayon – with paper wrapper removed (see notes)
Instructions:
- Mix together the flour, salt, and cream of tartar and set aside.
- Place the oil and the unwrapped crayon in a small saucepan. Heat on the stove over medium heat until the crayon has melted. This will go pretty quickly.
- Slowly add in the cup of warm water, stirring as you go. Continue to stir over the heat for about 30 seconds more to heat things together.
- Then add in the flour mixture, a bit at a time, stirring as you go. You will probably be able to remove the pan from the heat for this step. If you feel it is not coming together yet, put it back on the heat.
- As you continue to stir, the ingredients will all come together into a ball. Remove from the pan and set your ball of play dough on a piece of wax paper or parchment. Let it cool slightly and then knead the ball a bit for a final mixing of the ingredients.
- Store your homemade play dough in a container with a tight fitting lid.
Notes:
