Make a Turtle!

After posting about our clay fun, I thought it would be nice to do a post on how to make the turtles we made. They really are quite easy and came out cute. To make these simple turtle shapes: (reenacted with playdough, ha!) Roll out two larger balls, (for the shell,) five smaller balls, (for the feet and tail,) and one ball that is in between those two sizes, (for the head.)

 

Take one large ball and smoosh it fairly flat into a circle, perhaps slightly inclined to ovalness. 

Take four of your small balls and pinch one side, making them look a bit like polliwogs.

 Place them around your oval for the feet, skinny end to the inside. Make sure to leave room for the head and tail on the ends. Leave the plump end hanging over the edge. Squish skinny ends down a little bit so they stay in place. Now grab the plump ends and pull them down to your work surface so that they have a nice gentle curve along the tops and flatten out on the bottom. My apologies on the blurriness of the second photo, I didn't realize it was out of focus until I went to upload it. (To my credit, I was trying to make the turtle and take the pictures with one hand while jigging a baby on my knee with the other and doing my best to try to keep most of the playdough Kaia was using out of my carpet at the same time ;) )

The last of the little balls is for making the tail with. Start by rolling it out into a cylinder, then put more pressure on one end while you roll so that it tapers off into a point. Squish it in place with the pointy tail hanging off the end.

 Now take your medium sized ball to make the turtles head. Start out by making the same polliwog kind of shape as you did for the feet, then gently smoosh the top of the head down a little in the front. Squish the skinny end in place on the turtles body. Pinch the front of the head on the sides, just gently, to give the snout a little more form.

Time for the top shell. Take your last ball and squish it just a bit, you don't want it flat. Place it in the center of the turtle. Start working your way around, pulling the edges of the top shell to meet the edge of the bottom shell, first between all of the appendages, then touch it up over them.

 And, tada! You have a turtle!

You can find the tutorial on how to make this awesome yummy smelling homemade playdough here!

Check out the turtles we made and painted, and the recipe for homemade baking clay, here!

Hey, was this tutorial any help to you? I get a surprising number of visitors looking for how to make a turtle out of playdough, and I would really appreciate any feedback on this post. Was it clear, was anything confusing, was it thorough enough? Please let me know in the comments!

Homemade Playdough

We made some fantastic, colourful, scented playdough. This is my favorite playdough recipe I have ever made. It is so smooth and it feels so good on your hands. It holds together well and it lasts near on forever if you keep it in glass jars, or wrapped up tight in the fridge (although it takes a little working with to warm it up and make it not crumbly if you keep it in the fridge.) If it does start to dry out, you can easily bring it back to feeling like new with a little water and / or vegetable oil. Here's how to make your own:

Play Dough Recipe

1 C Flour
1/2 C Salt
2 tsp Cream of Tartar
1 Tbsp Oil
1 C Water
Food Colouring (optional)
Scent (optional)

Mix all of the above in a pan, adding oil after the water is stirred in.
Cook over medium heat, stirring, until the dough comes away from the sides of the pan. Cool and store in an airtight container.

If you want your batch to be all one colour, add the food colouring (and scent, if you choose) in the pan. For multiple colours, leave it out until the dough is done. Then separate the batch into the number of colours you want and knead in the food colouring and / or scent. Wear gloves if you want your hands to be the same colour come tomorrow.(Personally, I don't mind rainbow hands ;) )

The scents I used for these are:
Ground Cinnamon (red)
Orange Oil (orange)
Lemon Zest (yellow)
Ground Dill (green)
Mint Oil (blue)
Clove Oil (violet)
Cocoa Powder & Vanilla Extract (brown)
Vanilla Extract (white)

The white has poppy seeds added to it to give it its speckles.
All colours are 100% edible, although I wouldn't recommend it.
Sparkles are a fun thing to add, too!

Did I mention this makes a great gift? I gave some to each of the little people on my Christmas list. I made a batch for each colour and separated it out for the number of kids, which was 9! I made a plea on Freecycle for those plastic baby food containers with snap on lids, and made sticker labels for them. They went over very well! I will always be keeping it in mind for any future gifts I need. Because we kept ours in glass jars, however, I cannot actually vouch for how well the playdough kept in these plastic containers.

We did also end up making mint chocolate chip which was green with a tad of blue added, poppy seeds, cocoa powder, vanilla extract, and mint extract. It was crazy how much it seriously looked and smelled like mint chocolate chip ice cream! It was almost a problem, I wanted mint chocolate chip ice cream so bad every time we got it out, hehe. We also made pink, which was scented with rose and ylang ylang oil, mmmm!

(This post was updated in October of 2010. The playdough Kaia is pictured playing with at the end of the post is the exact same playdough batch that was made in this post in December of 2009, it really does keep well!)