Guest Post: DIY Playdough Tutorial

Today's guest post is a tutorial by Zoe from Scented Sweetpeas. Zoe says... "I am a Mum of 3 kiddies who made a New Year’s Resolution in 2010 to get back the creative side of me which I lost when having the kids (well apart from kiddies projects!). This has taken me down many routes from soap making, creating pretty felt things, calligraphy, crochet and sewing. I am also into eco-living and growing things down our allotment, collecting eggs from our chickens and hopefully harvesting our first honey from our bees very soon."

How to make your own playdough


A little while ago I made playdough for my children for the first time ever, why oh why didn’t I try years ago, it was so easy! I have since made it many times so thought I would share the recipe here at Bugs and Fishes by Lupin.


After much searching in books, on the web and chatting to other parents, here is the recipe I found had the best results.

All you need is:

A cup of warm water
A cup of flour
1 teaspoon of oil
2 teaspoons cream of tartar (found this is the cake making section of Tesco after looking for ages)
1/4 cup of salt
Food colouring

All you need to do is mix these ingredients into a pan and then start to warm it up. If you want to make a couple of different colours of playdough don’t add the colouring just yet but wait until the end.

Keep stirring and it gets really sticky and hard to stir, when nearly all the water has evaporated take it off the heat. Let it cool and then take it out of the pan.


I then added a little glitter to mine, you can never have too much sparkle in your life :-) (make sure you use edible cake glitter for this!).


You can then knead in the food colouring if you did not add this at the first stage. You can cut it into as many pieces as you like dependent on how many colours you want to make. I cut mine in to two so that my little girl could learn 2 new colours - I think 4 at once would just confuse her brain. I also used paste food colouring that I bought off e-bay to make cakes with, it is edible so is safe.

Here are the red and blue balls I made.


Just store them in an airtight container. My children (and I :-)), no matter how old, love playing with this. Be warned however, make sure your little ones don't eat it too much of it. My middle child loved to taste everything, once when she was at pre-school she came home and pooed bright green for 2 days - when I asked what had she eaten she replied 'playdough', when I asked why they hadn't stopped her she replied 'I hid under the table to eat it' :-). It is quite salty so I am surprised it didn't make her ill.

Really do give this a go if you have little ones, I wish I had tried it so much sooner!


Recently I posted about how I am really enjoying creating gifts rather than buying them and used this recipe to create a present for a friend’s child.

My friend has 4 kiddies so I know she doesn't want toys/gifts that fill the house :-) I had a little brain-wave (very rare in my brain and I was surprised it didn't hurt :-)) to use 1 of the many coffee jars I had been saving for something (not sure what but they are too nice the throw out) as a jar to keep some of this sparkly playdough in.

I made two balls of this sparkly playdough for my friends little boy and then decorated the jar with stars. I added a little label in the shape of a rocket with a note on the back saying 'Arthur's Cosmic Playdough'.


You could give this gift on its own or with some cookie or playdough cutters and a bit of oilcloth as a playdough mat. You could also adapt it for girly girls with pink playdough and a girly theme.

This was a real hit, he really loved it and his Mum was chuffed too as it doesn't take up much room and keeps him amused for ages :-)

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Visit Zoe's blog, or check out her Facebook page where she sells lots of pretty felt things.

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