Alright, last time I did one of these I swore I would never do it again. However, I bought a giant thing of flour at Walmart the first time I did it, sooooo I had to do it again. We cannot eat that much flour…I don’t bake.
I ended up being extremely happy with these and I feel like I need to tell ya’ll about it. I figured out how to get the price of each kit down considerably and was able to make inexpensive party favors for Maria’s birthday that will actually get played with. If you want to copy this idea…please do and send me pictures!
First off, rather than doing a large box for each kit like I did in this post, I opted for mini boxes. These boxes come in three packs for $2.99. I drove to IKEA (for other things) so I didn’t have to pay shipping but if you do, I suggest seeing exactly how many of these you can buy and still get $5.00 shipping. Based on my previous experiences it has to be quite a few. I used this recipe for the play dough in my last post, but have since adapted it some. The recipe below will make enough for 15 mini kits to have ~3/4 cup of play doh:
Ingredients:
- 4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 cup salt
- 4 tbsps cream of tartar
- 4 tbsps coconut oil (coconut oil smells so good…)
- 3 cups boiling water
- entire tube of gel food coloring (gel seems to enable more vibrant colors)
- 1-2 drops of vegetable glycerin (not required but helps play doh have a sticky texture)
Directions:
- mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl (this is where I let the kids help.)
- Add the boiling water, oil, food coloring, glycerin and essential oils to a sauce pan on medium low heat and stir until mixed (about 2 minutes.)
- Then add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon until cool enough to handle.
- Knead the doh with your hands and add water as needed. At this point add glitter if you’d like.
- Separate play dough into 15ths (if making 15 kits like I did). Wrap each hunk in clear plastic wrap.
- For my kits I did this twice, once with blue food coloring and once without any food coloring. Each kit received blue and white play doh.
Now it’s time to make the actual kit!
Foam paper covers the bottom of each box, my kids usually take it out and use it to play with the play dough on so I’d recommend taking the time to cut each piece out. I had some left over from my last set of play dough kits (see I just HAD to make more.) I found the cookie cutters in the kits above at Walmart (physically in the store) for $.79 cents a piece. I’m going to link patriotic cookie cutters for you here but the in-store options were the least expensive and the correct colors, so I’d recommend buying those in-store. I purchased these American Flag toothpicks and these vase-fillers on Amazon to add to the kits as well.
Then, I got a little out of control and used Canva to make cute labels to either tape or print on stickers for the outside of each box. Ta dah! Patriotic themed mini kits as party favors. My estimation is that each box cost me around $3.00-$3.50. Not too shabby for a favor that will hopefully get tons of play time!
Make sure to pin this post on Pinterest for future reference!
