DIY Homemade Play Dough Conversation Hearts

A few weeks ago at our Kindermusik class, Isla's teacher announced that we would be having a Valentine's Day party.  I hadn't even thought about having holiday parties already! Someone who is a sucker for crafty stuff, my heart sang at the possibilities of what I could make for the kids.  I know that sounds cheesy, but here I thought, would I make cupcakes, a cookie cake, cheesecakes, a craft, oh what would I do?!

So I started poking around my boards on Pinterest to get ideas and I came across making my own play dough that I had pinned from the Honest Company.  I've been wanting to make Isla play dough for a while and I have such great memories of making salt dough and letting it dry when I was little, but you know how it goes: you get side tracked, your kid is touching something they shouldn't, they are teething and miserable that day, you need to take a shower, and oh look it's bedtime- no play dough made that day.  

Now came the hard part what could I do with the play dough to make it into a Valentine's Day treat? I poked around Pinterest for some ideas and liked the ideas of giving a heart cookie cutter for the play dough and then I saw it, my heart shaped ice cube tray that was collecting dust on a shelf in my wall paneled basement.  What if I made the play dough  into cute small hearts and made them look almost like conversation hearts?!  To work I went!

The post where I found the recipe to make the play dough from the Honest Company blog You can find it here. In this recipe, they suggest using natural food coloring.  I did use natural food coloring for two of the colors, I wanted to use it for all the colors I made, but some of them got a little crazy.  I tried to make green and mixed the yellow and the blue and ended up with a horrible salmon color?!  I need to research that one more! 

So using the following ingredients:

1 cup flour

1 cup water

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

2 teaspoons of cream of tartar 

1/3 cup of Salt

natural food coloring 

1. On low medium heat, I combined all the products in a saucepan except the food coloring.  Once the dough started to thicken, I then added a few drops of the food coloring to the dough and continued to stir in the coloring.

2. I kept stirring, you will know when it's done when it all balls up around the spatula.  Through trial and error, since I made quite a few batches for different colors, a spatula is definitely what you want to use.  I used a wooden spoon the first time around and it didn't stick together as well and it was stuck all over the spoon, where the spatula, the play dough just rolled off.

3. When it is done, I cooled it down a little bit on a plate

 4. While it was still warm, I pressed the dough into the heart shaped ice cube trays and set it sit for a few minutes.  Since I was making a bunch of different colors, to keep it moist, I stored them in containers until I was ready to assemble all of them together. 

5. When I had the colors completed, I put 3 of each color in each treat bag and used an adorable ribbon to use at the top of the bag.

6. I then added the cookie cutter to that bag.  I wanted a separate container of play dough for the kiddos, since each of the hearts doesn't really add up to all that much play dough and to have something completely all one color for them.  I used little sauce glad containers for the tubs of play dough that were all in one color.  Now, I really tried to be supermom and make my own gift tags on Word, I followed tutorials and everything else.  I got pissed and frustrated and went out to seek other ideas.  I found this little shop on Etsy (to answer your question, yes I find everything on etsy!)  An instant download for a gift tag for play dough for $.99.  Yes please! You can find her shop here.

Happy Valentine's Day!