How To Make Playdough!

Well hello there!  Welcome to How to Make Playdough Dot Net, the picture tutorial site showing you exactly how to make play dough without a ton of effort, mess, or time!

As kids, we all played with playdough.  We had a great time, encouraging our creativity and pushing our imaginations to the limits as we sculpted entire worlds, figurines, animals, and all types of make-believe creatures.

We formed the most amazing memories.  This freedom of play set us up for a life of expanded boundaries.  We became comfortable with “coloring outside of the lines” and jumping over borders.  This is an important thing, this instilling an expansive mindset in our children.

For this reason I have created How To Make Playdough Dot Net.  We should all share this with our children, grandchildren, friend’s children, classrooms, sunday school kids, and more!  Kid’s every where should enjoy the best toy in existence.  The completely moldable, blank canvas of play dough!  And the best part is, it’s non-toxic, meaning that if your kid or dog eats it, it won’t be a problem.  It’s totally edible, but they will get a large dose of salt, so watch for any effects that could come from that.  Kids love playdough!

Caution:  Please Take Care!  This play dough will smell like food.  Your pets could become mistaken and eat it, resulting in an irregularly and dangerous dosage of salt.  Please keep it away from pets!

Also know, this recipe calls for using the stovetop, so please don’t allow your children to make this playdough without being supervised.  There are recipes out there that don’t require heating, however, they don’t work out as well.

Let’s Learn How To Make Playdough!

Above is just one example of the fun things you can do with your play dough once you’ve finished making it.  So I’m sure your thinking, “Okay… okay… let’s get on with it!”  So let’s skip all the nonsense and let me show you how to make play dough.

Making Playdough, Step One:  Get Your Ingredients!

If you plan on making playdough, you better plan on making a trip to the grocery store first, unless you happen to have all the ingredients already hiding in your cabinets somewhere. It’s not that many ingredients, and you will likely have some of them already, and some of them are actually optional.  Let’s look at the list here and see what we need.

• Two Cups of Lukewarm Water
• Two Cups of Regular Flour
• One Cup of Salt of Any Kind, Ground
• Two Tablespoons of Vegetable, Canola, or Olive Oil
• One Tablespoon of Cream of Tartar (Optional!)
• Food Coloring
• Smell-Good Scents (Optional!)

So let’s look at this list.  The water, flour, and salt are the bulk of your playdough.  These ingredients are all very inexpensive and are readily available at home and at the grocery store.  Most homes already have some kind of cooking oil, such as vegetable oil, olive oil, or canola oil.  My suggestion is to simply use vegetable oil as it is the most inexpensive.

Additionally, you don’t have to use the cream of tartar.  It is probably going to run you around four dollars for about two ounces.  What it does is increase the elasticity of your playdough once you are finished.  Another optional ingredient are the “smell-goods,” which aren’t necessary.  But they will hide the flour smell, which isn’t unpleasant, but you know, might as well have the play dough smell wonderful instead of like play dough.  If you want, you can even toss cocoa powder in there to make chocolate playdough.  It won’t taste good, but it will smell good!

 Step Two:  Mix the Play Dough Ingredients

Now that you’ve got all of your ingredients, it’s time to place them all in one, giant mixing bowl.  It doesn’t matter how you do it, just sling the proper amounts in there and stir!  You can double the recipe in one mixing bowl if you need.  It doesn’t take up too much space.  Once you’ve dumped it in the bowl, you should be looking at something that appears something like the picture below:

The easiest thing I’ve found to mix with is just a regular, long wooden spoon.  Most people already have these.  It doesn’t really matter though.  You could use a normal kitchen spoon, a fork, or a knife if you must.  It’s not a big ordeal.  You just want to be able to stir it.  But do NOT settle for using your hands, because you will be heating the play dough on the stove.  Burning yourself is not the correct way how to make play dough!

Grab your mixing spoon or fork and let’s get this bowl a-stirrin’!  However, don’t use a blender or any kind of electric mixing device.  It’s just not necessary.  Look how nice my mixing bowl looks with the playdough ingredients and the spoon hanging out!

Oh yeah, now we are talking!  We are getting ready to cook up some playdough, so prepare yourselves for the excitement!  Before that though, you have to do some stirring.  I prefer to stir mine up to a decent consistency before I begin heating it.  It’s not necessary, however, you can get a clumpy mixture if you try to heat it as you initially stir it.  Give it a whirl before heating it and it’ll turn out smoother.

Once you get a good mixture going, it will look something like below, with a nice, even consistency.

Once you’ve smoothed it out nice and good, you can go ahead and put it on the stove top…

Step Three: Put Your Play Dough on the Stove Top!

If you have a stove top that has a “Lo” to “Hi” knob on it that turns, and is numbered from 1 to 10, then I usually will put it on about a 3 and a 1/2 or it takes to long to thicken up.

Keep stirring, and you’ll see it begin to look like one of my favorite foods ever… mashed potatos!  Keep going though, until all of the watery parts are mixed in and the sides of the playdough start really sticking together.  The whole lump of play dough should become one, large clump and sit in the center of the mixing bowl.

Once this happens, it’s time to remove it from the heat.  Go ahead and do that, and you can even pull the play dough out of the bowl and place it on the counter top now.  Just be careful that you don’t get burnt in case you turned the heat up too high!

Note:  Pay attention to your playdough.  If it is still watery or sticky, then you need to keep mixing it and heating it.  Cooking it longer will remove some of the moisture which results in less stickiness. Don’t go too long or it will be too dry though!

Now we are ready to move on to the next step!  Dump it on the counter top and let’s get this moving!  The playdough fun cannot wait!

Step Four:  Knead by Hand!  Go!  Go!  Play Dough!

So look here, I’ve slapped my play dough out on the counter top and it’s ready to be kneaded some more, by hand now.  Make sure your counter top is clean, or you’ll end up with food crumbs and dust in your playdough.  You don’t want that.  Go ahead and knead the playdough with your hands and fists.  Turn it over, fold it, smack it, etc.  Make sure it becomes super smooth in consistency.  Work in any extra flour that remains on the outsides.  Smooth it all out real good.

So that’s what your raw, lumpy playdough looks like.  Go ahead and mix it up some more.  This is the point where you want it to look, feel, and play like real play dough.  So get it how you want it by working it with your hands.  If you want to get a decent idea of how much it actually is, roll it up into a ball, like so:

Now that’s a spicy meatball!  What I usually will do at this point is split my large ball into smaller balls, depending on how many colors I want, and how much of each color of play dough I want.  This time, I did it like below:

Okay, you’ve sectioned out your playdough into the amounts you want for each color, right?  So now it’s time to actually color it.  You have food coloring, and you have hands.  Let’s move on to the next part of the How to Make Playdough Dot Net adventure!

Step Five:  How to Make Play Dough Colored!

Generally, I don’t like to get the concentrated food coloring on my hands.  It doesn’t really stain them, but then you have to wash them firmly and deal with removing it.  It’s easier to just avoid getting your hands colored.  So what I do is I form a kind of pocket in my playdough balls.  This way I can drop the food coloring on the playdough and then fold it over without it touching my beautiful hands.

Go ahead and drop some food coloring in there of the color you want.  I start off with just a few drops and work it in, and then add them two or three more at a time.  For this amount, it takes about ten drops for me to get it dark enough to resemble the color I’m choosing.

As you mix it, consider wearing gloves if you want to.  I don’t find it that important, but I do try to keep it off of my hands, so fold it in and work it so that you don’t color your hands, because you’ll begin mixing colors as well, which doesn’t make for pure colored, awesome play dough.

So as I began working the food coloring into the playdough, I decided as I went that it wasn’t enough.  As I said before, I’ll start slow and add more as I go until I get the color I want.  I don’t want light green or dark green.  I want green green!  You can see me making my decision to add more below:

So I mixed in the additional green food coloring above, and then I proceeded to mix up every other color that I wanted.

I only had red, blue, green, and yellow food coloring, but I chose to separate the dough into six balls.  So what I did was mix the blue and red together to make purple, and then the red and yellow together to make orange!  Yay!  Let your kids help you decide how to mix the colors.  Teach them what combinations make what!  Playdough can be about learning too!

Here are all of my colors separated into balls:

Ahh, a thing of beauty and perfection!  Now for the most important step in making playdough… Playing!

The Sixth Step:  Play with your Playdough!

At this point, why do anything other than play with your playdough?  Let the kids get creative.  You should get in there too and make something awesome.  I did!  You want to see what I made?

I knew it!  The aliens did build the pyramids!  I have the orange UFO, the yellow pyramid, green alien, blue lake, and red fish!  And don’t forget my purple palm tree!

What can you come up with?  I’d for you to share it with me in the comments below!  Show us your kids’ and your own creations!

The Final Step:  Seal Up Your Play Dough

Now, if you want your play dough to last, you don’t want to just leave it out and about.  It will dry up and become hard, which is cool if you want to keep your creations!  You can even bake them a little to harden them.  But most of us want to reuse the playdough as many times as we can.  So you have to seal it in an airtight container.  Something that works great is plastic containers, like below:

Fit it in there however you want.  Don’t worry about the colors touching.  If you ball it up and create clearly defined borders, the playdough will be easy to pull apart.  It won’t mix.  Snap that lid on there and put it in the pantry or in the kid’s toy bin for later.  Viola!  You now have your own homemade playdough!

• Final Tip!  If your playdough becomes hard from drying out, make a bowl out of it and add one spoonful of clean water to it and fold the bowl inward on itself to trap the water.  Start kneading that playdough until all of the water is absorbed and evenly distributed.  If it’s still too hard for your taste, then add another spoonful of water and knead some more.  Eventually you will get it back to how you like it.  However, if it ends up not working out for you, chuck it in the trash and make a new batch!  The fun is in making playdough anyways!

Thanks for Visiting “How to Make Playdough Dot Net”!

Now you know the secrets of nannies, grandmothers, and regular mothers!  It’s so easy to make play dough to entertain your kids.  You can make as much as you like and allow them to make huge castles, landscapes, animals, robots, and more.  It’s better than clay because it’s more easily workable, and it’s easier to clean up than paint and magic markers!  Just use hot water and you’re good to go!

Please share any of your own creations or methods in the comments below and I’ll post them as soon as I see it!  Thanks for stopping by How to Make Playdough Dot Net!  I hope your playdough making adventures are good ones!  Bye now!  Special thanks to the original Playdoh!