Maia and I made homemade candy cane playdough this past weekend. I'm always trying to think of gifts that Maia can participate in making and this one fits all my criteria perfectly: it's easy and fun to make, inexpensive, and once given, encourages creative play.
As usual we used MaryAnn Kohl's recipe for play clay from First Art. I always plan to try new recipes, but love this one so much, I never do.
Homemade Playdough Recipe
Ingredients:
- 5 cups water
- 5 cups flour
- 2 1/2 cups salt
- 3 Tablespoons cream of tartar
- 10 Tablespoons vegetable oil
- Food coloring
Instructions:
Mix water, salt, cream of tartar, and food coloring. Cook on medium-low heat, stirring regularly until mixture is hot. Add oil. Stir in flour a cup at a time, stirring in between each addition. Mix until playdough pulls away from pan and is no longer sticky (pinch it between your fingers to test). Dump dough on counter, let cool a bit, then knead.
Add Glitz and Glamour to Your Homemade Playdough
To make the candy cane playdough, we made two batches of the play clay, one red and one white. After the dough cooled down a bit, we kneaded in some glitter for holiday glitziness and some peppermint essential oil (about 10 drops each batch) for the yummy candy cane smell.
Help Your Playdough do the Candy Cane Twist
Next we gathered our playdough (cut up into individual portions - I think we divided each batch into 12 or so) and our packaging materials (pint canning jars, holiday fabric squares, yarn, color copies of Maia's Christmas "cards", and some labels I made in Word).
We rolled the playdough into snakes...
then twisted one red and one white one together like a candy cane.
Each playdough twist was put into a jar and we added the fabric, lids, and labels.
Et voila! Candy cane playdough. Gifts Maia helped make that she can give to her friends.
If you liked these candy cane lollipops, then you might like the other winter and holiday crafts and recipes in The Artful Winter ebook:
