How to make completely beautifully colored natural dyes for play dough from plants and kitchen cabinet ingredients! Add these natural dyes to my best recipe for dough to play without cooking with zero waste and you will get a great, completely natural gaming experience for your little ones!
Make mine first the best recipe for dough for 4 minutes! I made three batches of it to create these 7 different natural doughs for play dough. Of course, you would choose which dyes to create each time you create a batch, and you would try one by one to make it a little easier, because the division before adding the dye was a little complicated.
Next, choose which dyes you want to make with my photo to see the colors that each material creates. I just like how soft and beautiful every shade is! Then read the instructions on how to make the dye and add colored water instead of boiling water in my recipe. This is important – it can’t be as good as boiling water, otherwise it will be too sticky. Enjoy!
Avocado seeds
Avocado seeds create a beautiful peach shade. It’s so soft, but it really works well, especially when combined with some other colors (yes, I recommend mixing colors!)
Remove 2-3 pips from the center of the avocado, rinse and place in a pan. Pour water over them so that they are just immersed, then cook gently for about 20 minutes or until the water changes color. When he’s ready, he’ll look orange.
Prepare all the dry ingredients in a bowl and then use 1 cup of this colored water as the final part of the recipe. After cooling sufficiently, mix and knead. It should be super soft and beautifully peachy!
Blueberries
Blueberries create a beautiful pastel pink / purple color and quickly release their dye. Just add a small handful to the pan and almost cover them with water, then simply simmer until the water turns pink. Drain the blueberries and use this water as the last step in my recipe without cooking.
Coffee
You can use either coffee, drained tea or cocoa powder to create this beautiful natural shade of brown (although this absolutely amazing can be made from cocoa). recipe for chocolate dough maybe keep it instead!)
Turmeric powder
You only need a very small amount of turmeric powder to create this amazingly bright yellow color. Beware, it is an extremely effective dye that is often used in cooking, so make sure your children play with it on a tray or tablecloth! After mixing into the dough and cooling it, I found it nice, but I had to be especially careful during its production (especially on my new white plates in the kitchen!)
Simply add a teaspoon of turmeric to boiling water and continue the recipe as usual.
Matcha green tea powder
As with turmeric powder, this color is very easy to produce. Simply add it to boiling water with 1-2 teaspoons. You can see the full post and a video about the creation Matcha green tea play dough I recently posted it here!
It’s such a subtle, natural shade of green, so different from a gel food coloring. I JUST LOVE this in conjunction with natural bulk materials such as cones, pebbles and leaves!
Red cabbage
This dye smells the strongest, but at the same time creates the most amazing shade of purple! I think it’s worth a little smell of cabbage to create it, and a little of it goes a long way. Simply grate a large handful of red cabbage (two handfuls to create a blue color.) Place in a pan and just cover with water, then cook over low heat for about 20 minutes.
This is the only picture I shared from the dye right after the cooking was done, because it’s just SO alive. I love it! As you can see, it will be very deep purple and will instantly add an amazing color to the dry ingredients. Use 1 cup according to the instructions in the recipe.
Red cabbage + baking soda (baking soda)
Now the creation of this blue dye was a little more complicated and it took me several trials and errors! I’ve already had the water from red cabbage changed from purple to blue amazing experiment with color change I did it with the kids a few years ago. (By the way, if you have red cabbage on hand, you should definitely try this activity next time!)
So I knew how to magically change purple from purple to blue, BUT due to other ingredients in the recipe for playing dough, there was a new chemical reaction and the whole dough changed to a foamy consistency! Fun, but definitely not what I was trying to create.
To make this shade of blue, you then need to create my recipe for playing dough WITHOUT tartar cream. Next, take one cup of purple cabbage water and add 1 teaspoon of baking soda (baking soda). It may rustle slightly, but then mix it and see what happens! Woooo, you just created an amazing shade of blue!
Now use this blue dye to complete the recipe!
When they were all created, I unfolded them all and was excited about the range of subtle shades. I expected the cabbage and turmeric to smell during the game, but in fact, the smell seemed mostly gone.
If you find it too strong (or use a more concentrated dye), simply add a little lemon essential oil to refresh it.
I sent the kids on a call to find flowers and leaves that they could use with the dough in the game, and I love their selection. It all comes from our garden (yay for spring time!)
They chose rosemary leaves, cherry blossom, apple blossom, forget-me-not, roses and dandelions.
Everyone played with them in different ways, including making cakes for the cafe and also pizzas with rosemary and avocado!
Free parts always expand the game options and I prefer natural accessories.
You can make even more shades from this dough and give your children a challenge to connect with as many people as possible with the help of objects from nature! Cones, pebbles, flowers, leaves, sticks, shells, sand, grass and more. An exhibited photograph or in a nature book of what they found would be amazing!
I absolutely LOVE these shades natural dyes for playing dough. They are pastel, soft and at the same time extremely beautiful! And of course, no two batches will ever be the same because of how long you cook the dye or how much you add. I think it adds a much more interesting element to the game!
Which of these natural dough dyes do you like the most and which ones will you try first? Please let me know in the comments below or come find me on Instagram where I share everyday gaming ideas and answer as many questions as I can (as well as a lot of time wasting chatting!) Tag me if you try, and I’ll share it there again. I would really like to see what you create! Please acknowledge me when sharing. Thank you.