10 DIY Paint and Play Dough Recipes 

All kids love messy crafts, but it’s inevitable that their curiosity will get to them eventually…and they’ll try to eat it!  By making your own paint and play dough from natural ingredients, you don’t have to worry about nasty chemicals.  You’ll also save money by whipping up batches of your own paint and play dough!  Here’s how…

Perfect Paints

1. Flour Paint

This is so easy and can be made in seconds!  Just mix a little flour, water and food colouring to make a great paint with a thick consistency.  Use egg cups to make different colours, mixing food colours to get the perfect shade (e.g. blue and red to make purple).

2. Coffee Paint

Mixing coffee granules with water creates the perfect watercolour-style paint for tree trunks.  Although limited by colour (you’re only going to get brown out of this recipe), you could use it to paint a tree trunk, then have fun sticking on cherry blossom made from cotton wool balls, leaves you’ve found in the garden or apples made from magazine clippings.

3. Toddler Paint

If you have a toddler who just HAS to eat everything in sight, mix a little food colouring with yoghurt for worry-free painting.  Just put it on a plastic dish and let your little one enjoy the texture, as they dip their fingers in and (hopefully) get some on the paper!  Go easy on the food colouring, just a drop is enough to colour it.

4. Bath Paint

Let your kids paint pretty rainbows in the bath!  Just mix a little shaving foam with food colouring for pretty foam paints you can use in the tub.  (It’s worth testing the shades on an inconspicuous area first, just so you don’t stain those gleaming white bath tiles, but it’s a recipe that’s known and loved by many.)

5. Finger Paint

Mix 3tbsp sugar, ½ tsp salt, ½ cup corn starch and 2 cups of water with the food colouring of your choice for a nice thick finger paint.  Store in little tubs and this one will last a while too, so you can have batches on hand when you need them.

Play Dough

1. No-Bake Play Dough

This is such a simple recipe for anyone to follow…and you may even have all of the ingredients at home!  Just mix a cup of flour, a cup of warm water, 2tsp cream of tartar, 1tsp oil, ¼ cup salt in a pan over a medium heat.  Stir for 5-10 minutes until the ingredients come together.  Knead the dough, divide into sections and combine each section with a food colouring of your choice.  Keep the dough in air tight containers to prolong its life.

2. Naturally Dyed Dough

This blog has a great recipe for play dough that doesn’t require food colouring to dye it: http://www.minieco.co.uk/natural-dye-for-homemade-playdough/.  You can extract the natural colourings from raspberries, blueberries, beetroot, rose petals and more!

3. Frozen Dough

This fabulous recipe creates an ice-cream like dough that’s great for sensory play.  Combine shaving cream and food colouring, and then pop in the freezer – that’s it!  Full details of how to make it can be found here: http://www.growingajeweledrose.com/2013/05/play-recipe-freezy-dough.html.  In a few hours, the ‘dough’ will be ready to use (just make sure the kids don’t eat this one!)

4. Sand Paint

Do you have a sand pit in the garden?  Grab a few handfuls and bring it in to cook up a fun play dough recipe!  Just combine a cup of sand, a cup of warm water, 2 cups of flour and 1tbsp oil to create a dough-like consistency.  You can add food colouring to this, but it’s also great to mould into shapes in natural form and decorate with stones, shells and other natural items.

5. Glitter Dough

Add a touch of bling to your kiddie crafts!  Use the basic no-bake dough recipe above, but knead in some glitter when adding the food colouring.  You could also set up an imaginary bakery and let the kids make play dough cakes decorated with real hundreds and thousands or silver cake decorating balls.

There are so many great play crafts you can create using just the products already in your cupboards.  Whip up one of these recipes the next time the kids are getting bored to encourage play through painting and moulding.