Homemade Play Dough dyed with Natural Fruits and Spices

Making natural, homemade play dough is a fun, easy, and non-toxic craft you can do with your children! This recipe is made with natural dyes so there isn’t any toxic chemical dyes that you may find in store bought play dough.  It’s always fun to experience the process of creating something and enjoying the final product! You can even put your play dough in the oven to make hard sculptures of your work or ornaments to decorate!

Ingredients:

For the Dough:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 cups warm water
• 1 cup salt
• 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 Tablespoon cream of tartar

For the Dye:

• 1 cup blueberries, 1 cup water (purple color)
• 1 cup Raspberries, 1 cup water (light pink color)
• 2 Teaspoons Turmeric, 1 cup water (light yellow color) hint: be careful, it stains easily!
• 2 Tablespoons coco powder, 1 cup boiling water (light brown color)

Directions:

For the Dough:

1. Mix all the ingredients together in a pan and constantly stir over low heat with a wooden spoon. The dough will begin to come together and it will start to become hard to mix. The dough is done when it clumps together in the middle of the pan and is no longer sticky, it takes about 3 minutes. If the dough is still sticky it simply isn’t done and needs to be heated more.
2. Remove the dough from the pan onto a clean counter top and knead vigorously until the dough is silky smooth. Then divide the dough into balls (I divided them into 4 balls for just 4 different colors, you can make as many balls as you would like).

For the Dye

1. First we will start with the blueberries, take a cup of blueberries (frozen or fresh) and put them into a pan, then add 1 cup of water and bring to a boil stirring occasionally. Once it’s boiling lower the heat and let the blueberries simmer (until liquid has reduced to about half) this will take about 20 minutes. When it’s done and cooled use a strainer to drain the color. (You will have dye left over, so save it in a class container when you want to make more play dough)
2. Follow these same steps for each fruit or plant you use!
3. Once the dye is all made take the balls of play dough, make a small indentation in each one and add about 1 tablespoon of dye into the hole; if your balls are small add less dye. Use your hands and knead the dye into the dough until it’s no longer sticky (You may want to use gloves while doing this depending on what fruit or plant you used) Also make sure you do this over a bowl it can get messy.
4. Store your dough in an airtight container so it doesn’t dry out.  If you find your dough is sticky or too moist put it back in the pan and heat it up. If your dough begins to dry out knead a bit of water into it.
5. Now enjoy making fun shapes and animals out of your dough!