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Painted Gluten Free Playdough / Salt Dough

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GlutenFreeSaltDough

For the girls’ birthdays they used their money to buy this book called, Green Crafts for Children. I could just eat this book up. It’s so pretty that in the week we’ve had it, the girls and I can’t stop looking at it. We want to do everything, but these Salt Dough Fruit are our second project from the book, following the Cork Animals (so cute!). The recipe in the book called for wheat flour, but I substituted with cornstarch. Rather than use all my nice sea salt in clay, I also went out and bought some salt for less than a dollar—salt that I wouldn’t feed my family 🙂

gluten-free-play-dough

Gluten Free playdough

NOTE: salt dough is life-threatening to pets

1 cup of water
1 cup of salt
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1 cup of cornstarch (I’ve also use tapioca, but it doesn’t work as well as cornstarch)

1. Bring the water to a boil. Add the salt and stir for about a minute to partially dissolve the salt. (Most of the salt won’t dissolve).
2. Turn off the heat and stir the coconut oil into the salt and hot water mixture. Set aside.
3. Put the cornstarch in a mixing bowl, and add the salt water mixture (it must still be vert hot in order for the dough to work).
4. Stir the mixture carefully (it will be hot).
5. Let the dough cool until you can touch it with your hands.
6. Knead the dough, and then it’s ready for playing!
7. Store in an airtight bag.
8. When the dough has been used for a while and is crumbly, add a splash of water and work it in with your hands.

gluten-free-salt-dough

You can also bake this dough!!!
1. Put your creations in the oven at 200 degrees for several hours or until they are completely dry. The thinner the pieces are the faster they dry of course 🙂
2. Let the baked pieces cool, then paint them if you want.

TIP: At Christmas we like to use cookie cutters and put a hole in the top of each so we can use them as ornaments after baking and painting. This also works for making necklaces, as shown in the book.

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♥, Kelly

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  3. Oh my girls would love this! Thanks for sharing and for the cute photos! I am going to look for that book now – looks in line with the types of projects we do.
    -Ali 🙂

  5. Those are amazing!! You might want to expand the idea and get a jump on Christmas and make some neat ornaments. We still have some salt dough ornaments a cousin made with her kids. Those kid are now in their 20s and the ornaments still look great!

    Saw your link on Twitter BTW–cool, huh?

    Shirley

  6. Thanks Shirley! It would make great ornaments! And I was on Twitter? I will have to ask Andy -I know nothing about that! LOL

  7. Sorry I wasn’t clear, Kelly. Someone else put your link on Twitter … they “tweeted” on your link to share it with the world. 🙂

    BTW, even those fruit pieces would make fun ornaments. I have both a watermelon and strawberry Christmas ornament that I love.

    Shirley

  9. Oh this is such a neat idea to try with my son now that he is on vacation. He’s really into cars so salt dough cars would be his thing for sure.

  11. NEAT! I LOVE it! Never thought about gluten free crafting. Did you substitute because you don’t have wheat flour or because you didn’t want it to soak through the skin? I ask because I’m making the switch and have a HUGE bag of flour I bought for crafting a couple years ago. Thanks!

    BTW chicken is thawing to make your chicken pot pie tonight :o) can’t wait!