Wednesday, April 25, 2007

MAKE Play dough... (literally)



Today, no knitting news. Still working on the same stuff. No spinning news. Haven't been able to find time to sit at my wheel in a week : (

BUT...

The kids and I had TONS of fun making play dough...from scratch! The recipe is from the CRAFT magazine, publishers of the MAKE magazine. Nancy Dougherty, publisher of CRAFT, has a VERY simple recipe for this play dough.

I had actually seen this recipe somewhere in a different magazine, so I THINK it's okay to say what the ingredients are. (If not, I'll end up deleting some of this post later...)



You'll need:

1 cup all purpose flour (I used King Arthur)
1 cup water (I used cool)
1/2 cup salt (all I had in the house was a 7 or 8 year old iodized salt and it seemed to work fine)
1 tbs. oil (I only had extra virgin olive)
2 tbs. cream of tartar (it's in one of those small plastic containers in the spice asile)
Food coloring



This is what I did:

Mixed all ingredients in a non stick saucepan. Put heat on medium-low (or on my electric stove, the line BEFORE medium). Turned the timer on to 10 minutes. I pretty much stirred constantly. At about 6 minutes, the stuff inside the pan turned to a soft doughy mass and I added some food coloring. I only used 5 drops or less and got pastel/watercolorish shades. I think you can use much more if you want vibrant colors. Stir again. You can lift the mass of dough right out of the saucepan. It's a bit warm, but pleasantly so. If you have arthritis, it would be wonderful to mold in your hands. I liked doing it.

Here is the pale blue:



Here is the pale lilac:



Tim playing and shaping....



Ben making balls....



Tim's finished Cyberworm character....



I can't tell you how much fun it was to make this. SO EASY! And this dough is fantastically soft and pliable. You can read more about it on page 133 of the latest CRAFT magazine. Even if you don't have any kids, you should make this.

*If you don't want it to harden into your personally designed shapes (and you're not using it for more than 5 minutes), put it into a plastic bag along with a damp paper towel to keep it moist. The outside edges start to get "crispy" after 10 minutes or so.*

Happy Dough Day!

18 comments:

Jackie said...

Great recipe - thanks for sharing it. The boys look so cute playing with it.

Anonymous said...

I used to make play dough when Samm was little. It was so much fun!

Anonymous said...

Babs you are SOOOO hot, knitting is obviously for hotties...mmmmmm mmmmmm give me some of that babe...

Gina House said...

Just so you know...that was Ian...my husband....the wacko.

Gina House said...

Okay, scratch that. It was Matt...my hubby's best friend...

You know, Matt, you've never been to our knitting weekends away. Not only do we have alcohol, but also we flash our boobs and/or tushies!

You don't know WHAT you're missing! so there...

Lora said...

oh that looks like fun Gina!! I'll have to keep that in mind one day for the boys!!

Anonymous said...

That's it. I'm coming...and I'm also going to attend the knitting meeting!

NH Knitting Mama said...

Aw, looks like so much fun! Thanks for posting the recipe, I'd like to try it with my boy sometime.

Amy Boogie said...

I love homemade playdough. We haven't done that in a while. Thank you for the reminder.

Gina House said...

Matt,you have NO idea how much sex talk you missed last night! We actually scared one woman away. She got up and left! It was hilarious!

Babs : )

AND.....I loved your comment...you'd fit right into the group...if you had the guts to come. I mean, to the group.

Lapdog Creations said...

Looks like great fun!
Cute new pic in your profile!

Anonymous said...

I seriously would go sometime, sounds like a blast, I also would have to meet Mr. Special there you told me about. Why did the woman leave when it was just getting good?? I also couldn't resist the temptation of being around all these women knitting...that is just so hot. Oh and I always have the guts to come. If "guts" is what they're calling it nowadays...

Anonymous said...

Oh and your Sleepeyes pic is awesome. The other one is cool but in a spooky way...

Gina House said...

Matt....his proper name is "Body Talk Guy" or BTG. And we figured that since he didn't show up last night in person for his weekly "audio porno", he was having some sort of out-of-body experience at wherever it is that he lives....I'm assuming it's some sort of "weiner warehouse" or something....

Thanks about the pic...I took it yesterday : )

Kimberly said...

Oh how I love playdough!! I'm definitely going to do this with my kids-they'll love it. Thanks for sharing. I do wish we lived closer, we would have fun. Although it sure looks like you're having fun anyway! :)

Laurin said...

hmmmm - make some flesh colored play dough for the par-tay on Sunday. We'll figure out something to do with it!!!

Reenie Hanlin said...

Hi!

I used to make this with my girls all of the time and when I worked in a daycare. It is a fantastic recipe! You can also use a packet of KoolAid (the kind without the sugar)in place of the food coloring-- it gives the playdough a yummy fruity smell!
At Christmas I would put a few drops of Peppermint oil into it and sprinkle in some glitter.

Yay!

Karen said...

This is the same stuff our nursery school makes all the time. I used to do the purchasing and I finally had to order big containers of cream of tartar thorugh a local bakery since it was just too expensive to make school size quantities using those little containers from the grocery store. Trivia for today: cream of tartar is some sort of leftover from the dregs of making wine. This play clay lasts a healthy long time if you keep it wrapped since the cream of tartar helps preserve it.

Knit in peace