Olaf's Warm Hugs Scented Playdough- Party Size!

Last week I told you guys about my daughter's super awesome 7th birthday party and one of the crafts that we did. I wanted to post about another craft that was done at the party and what was a big hit with the kids! Bridgette helped me step-by-step with this but we only had the already made playdough for the party. At the party the kids got to scent and color it. Want to know how to make it? Okay, okay I guess I will tell you!

I got the idea originally from The Prairie Homestead Blog. I did make a couple changes to it so that it was a bigger batch and I wanted to make it my own. Lets start with the ingredients that we need:

Ingredients

• 2 cups all purpose flour (I got mine right from the dollar store)
• 1 cup salt (also from the dollar store) 
• 4 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 2 cups water
• 4,5 tablespoons grapeseed oil (or any oil you have laying around)
• Essential oil 
• Food coloring

First step that I did was put in all the dry ingredients together and mix them up. I put them right into the saucepan that I used to cook it. 

After the dry ingredients are all mixed up then you add the wet ingredients. I did water first, then the grapeseed oil. After that you mix everything really well until it looks like a big soupy mess:

Easy enough right? I had my daughter mix up everything. Then after it's a big soupy mess you put it on medium heat right on the stove. I put mine on high heat at first and it cooked it way too quickly so medium was the way to go. You want to keep on stirring it until it forms into a ball. You will start to see the parts that get cooked. It kind of reminds me of pancake batter. After it is all cooked it will look like this:

Believe it or not I totally forgot to take a picture of what the big batch looked like so we had to quickly make a small batch. It wont look as dry as this because I accidentally overcooked it. Whoops. I found that if you do overcook it keep on adding water and grape seed oil to it. It helps keep it together so it doesn't break apart as easily. It is going to be very hot (that's why I called it Olaf's warm hugs playdough) but you want to take the just cooked mixture and put it on a plate to cool down. It will take about 30 minutes for it to cool down completely but you want to keep on checking on it. This makes around 5 cups of playdough.

 Now comes the fun part, coloring and scenting it! The kids enjoyed this part. I have the neon food coloring set with green, blue, pink, and purple. I let each kid choose what color they wanted out of the batch. What I did to make it less messy and make their hands not as colored I made a little well in the middle of the playdough then put the coloring right in it.

I dropped the coloring right in the middle one drop at a time. After we did a drop we mixed it together and if it wasn't the shade we wanted we added another drop. 

The kids loved to mix it together but some got a little antsy about it not turning automatically the color they wanted. I just told them to keep at it until it turned the right color. I would be lying if I said our hands didn't turn colors at all, because they did. It wasn't as bad though since the playdough got a lot of the color. Here is what Bridgette's and my hands looked like after mixing the purple:

See, not bad. For the blue playdough it only took two drops to turn into a good blue. For the purple it took about 4 drops. Just keep on doing it drop by drop until you get the right color you want. Next is the scenting part. I let the kids choose from peppermint or orange. Most choose the peppermint but a couple choose the orange. Different scents help with different things. Peppermint can help with focus, orange is calming (plus it works as an immune booster), but there are so many different Young Living scents that you can pick and choose from that help with different things. 

The kids thought it was so cool that the playdough smelled good. I also made a well in the middle and put the drops right in it and told them to squish it together until it smelled good. With peppermint it only took a drop but with some lighter scents it can take more. I got little containers from the dollar store (they were 5 for a dollar) that I gave to each kid to put their playdough in. You can use just plain old tupperwear containers too. 

This was so much fun for all of us. Bridgette loved this and she keeps on asking me to make more. 

If you are looking for a fun craft to do at a party, or even just a fun craft to do with the kiddos, I suggest you try it out!

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