Birthday Party Playdough

Birthday party playdough is a must! My favourite creative outlet at the moment is planning my kids birthday parties and cakes. As many dietitians do, I love to bake and create! I usually only bake for special occasions, so planning parties and birthday cakes brings me great joy!

Although parties and baking usually involve a lot of sugary indulgence, I still try to find a balance in my approach. One of the ways I do this is by making playdough party favours. It is a lovely homemade, budget friendly, non-edible, party favour that can be easily suited to any theme!

The most recent party we had was to celebrate my son’s second birthday. The theme was Paddington Bear, a much-loved fictional character in our home. My 4 year old daughter and I very easily created these marmalade playdough jars and I was thrilled with our efforts. They were my very own vision come to life and I love how they turned out! I have a tutorial in my shop for the price of a coffee. It includes the labels I designed and the recipe for 12 x 250 ml jars of orange scented playdough. You could easily have these labels printed as stickers but I very cost effectively printed, cut out and glued them to the plastic jars. We used elastic bands and string to attach the gingham fabric circle to the lids for a very authentic ‘jam jar’ look. The tutorial also includes a recipe and labels for ‘strawberry jam’ playdough’. I wish I had had this idea for my daughter’s 3rd birthday party which was a teddy bears picnic. You could make the jars any size you like! Miniature anything is very cute!

For my daughter’s 2nd birthday, Peter Rabbit was the theme so I made playdough carrots. I simply filled cone-shaped party favour bags with orange playdough and tied it with green ribbon. I also added a cookie cutter. It was a very effective party pack filler.

And for many of the parties, I have set up a play dough station according to the theme. Her 4th birthday party was a garden bugs theme so I made playdough in all the colours of the rainbow and gave the kids wobbly eyes, pipe cleaners, scissors and wooden craft sticks to make the creepy crawlies in their imaginations come to life. They were able to take them home because I had put the playdough in small plastic tubs. It was great fun and really fun to see what they came up with.

You will find a free version of the non-scented playdough recipe in my shop.