Sparkly Lime Jello Play Dough

I always seem to get all my best ideas for holiday activities about a week before the actual holiday. Not necessarily ideal for my line of work as a blogger when folks tend to look for activities early, but perhaps that is the universe trying to tell me something …like don’t rush life. That’s probably a post for another day though.  Regardless,  I absolutely could not wait to share our latest and greatest St. Patrick’s Day fun with you!

I know glitter in play dough is nothing new. In fact every kid blogger and their mother, sister, father, brother has probably done it. However, given my dread of all things messy, it’s new to me and I thought it was blog worthy. Well let me tell you it-is-the-best-thing-ever! Wait, I feel the need to say that again. It’s that much fun. Glitter play dough is the best thing ever! The glitter actually stays in the play dough (for the most part) and very little has come off on the table or our hands. Finally, a way we can add some sparkle into our lives without adding it to our kitchen floor. And the fact that it smells like lime jello doesn’t hurt either.

I have been a huge fan of Jello Play Dough ever since I found this recipe from Modern Parents Messy Kids.  In fact it’s the play dough recipe we use 90% of the time. For St. Patrick’s Day  I thought we needed to “sham-rock” things up a bit.  I was picturing vibrantly colored, dark green, lime smelling,  very sparkly, shamrock-like play dough. I think we nailed it. I can’t stop staring at this beautiful play dough. It’s soooo sparkly!

You want to make some don’t you? Just pop over to MPMK and follow their Jello Play Dough  recipe using Lime Jello. We added green gel food coloring while it was cooking to pump up the color. I like using gel food coloring as it tends to yield more vibrant results than the liquid.  After your play dough has cooled a bit (20min or so) and you are at the point of kneading in a little extra flour, add your glitter. Lots of glitter. A little at a time so it’s not too overwhelming or messy.

(The green glitter was provided to us free to craft with from craftprojectideas.com.)

As soon as we had the glitter mixed in Mr. C was ready to play.  He  headed to the silverware drawer, grabbed himself a fork ( because he wanted to “poke holes”), and he dug right in. Eventually I scrounged up a few rogue shamrocks for him to incorporate into his play. He played and played and played. He was completely engrossed like I’ve never seen him before (and he loves playing with play dough). Eventually we took a break for nap time and that allowed me to set up the invitation that I had in mind when we started making this play dough to begin with.

I don’t know if I can ever go back to glitter-less play dough again. C is fascinated by it.  He has played with this green glittery goodness literally for hours.

I mean really…. do you not just want to get your hands on that play dough?

If you are loving green glitter this time of year, or just in need of some other St. Patricks day project inspiration be sure to check out our Glittered Shamrock Bouquet ,  Marble Painted Shamrocks and our Shamrocks on Canvas too!