Valentines

Hi everyone!

Happy February and Happy New Year! I’m sorry about the lack of posts but you know busy Christmas season and all that.

I wanted to share my Valentines Dough Cute favours with you, they have been a thing for a couple of Valentines Days now but remain ever popular.

The idea came about through my love of seasonal and themed crafts. A pot of glittery red or pink dough is going to come in handy for making and modelling lil love hearts. <3!

A personal gift element is added by stamping the child’s name in the dough. A special touch is a ‘You’re dough cute’ sticker and inside the pack a ‘I’m dough cute’ sticker for the recipient. Heart shaped sprinkles are thrown in there too!

Any name etc can be stamped in the dough ^ this mummy gets it.

 

 

 

 

Haunted House – Halloween printable

Keep the little ghouls busy with some Halloween colouring fun.

Print our haunted halloween house (sorry it’s lots of black!) and colour with whatever medium the kiddies like. Highlighters and watercolours are a great choice!

Download here > haunted halloween house

You might also like our Halloween dough mats with cutters.

 

Thanks for reading, have a spooktacular time!

Lezah x

Joining #ColourMyEveryDay

Colour My Every Day is an Instagram challenge created by Adventures & Tea Parties to help discover and celebrate colour every day. This is right up my street as you know I love colour everyday at The Dotty Dough Factory.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this week sharing my images and exploring the hashtag.  Discovering many like minded colour lovers – exactly as intended.

I wanted to share and record my week of colour my every day. The challenge began on the 19th August, I’m a little late publishing this post – oops!

1. Favourite

It’s hard to choose favourites but pastels are usually popular in Summer in a rainbow formation of course.

2. Outdoors

Taking a break outdoors, on the swing because I’m a kid. In colourfull kicks as always.

3. Combination

I love the colour combinations that my work at The Dotty Dough Factory allows me to play with everyday.

4. Object

A happy little stamper and a great pop of contrasting colour.

5. Pattern

I’m very proud to have our very own pattern, commissioned and created when I rebranded.

6. Handmade

It’s all about handmade around here and rainbows too!

7. Recommend a colour lover. While I didn’t get around to posting this on Instagram (life happened) I’d like to recommend a few colour lovers right now.

 

 

Colour Me Fun – A colour lover who is totally on my wave length.

 

 

 

Oh My Cakery  A colour loving page with cake to boot!

 

 

Color Made Happy This page has been making me color happy with their colourfull crafts for a long time now.

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Finally I’d like to thank of Adventures & Tea Parties for putting together her wonderful Instagram challenge. I’ve connected with many more colourfull accounts and picked up a few new hashtags too

Playdough Rock Monsters

We made our own rock monsters out of Dotty Dough and a few simple things. They are soooo cool we wanted to share.

Our invitation to play was very simple with dotty dough, googly eyes, pieces of card quickly chopped and a sharpie pen for details.

This is how our jolly bunch turned out.

 

Share your little ones creations today #Dottydough on Instagram x

50 Things To Do This Summer

I wasn’t going to do a bucket list as such this year but as social media keeps reminding me. We only have X amount of summers with our children. So I’ve jotted down 50 possible things for us to do this Summer focusing on these five areas.

1. Outdoors
2. Days out
3. Treats
4. Learning
5. Games

Outdoors activities include.

• Camping
• Beach Day
• Rock pooling
• Bike ride
• Pokemon hunt
• Sandcastle competition
• Water gun fight
• Treasure hunt
• Paddling Pool
• Picnic

The days out/ visits are mostly things local to us.

• Flamingo Land
• Ryedale Show
• Crazy Golf
• Panett Park
• National Railway Museum
• York Maize Maze
• Thorpe Sports
• Forbidden Corner
• Library
• Jorvik Centre

Treats I’m shamed to say mostly include food but spread over the six weeks shouldn’t be too bad.

• Bake a cake
• Popcorn with a movie
• Make homemade pizza
• Visit the sweet shop
• Get a McDonald’s
• See the fireworks
• Fish and chips at the seaside
• Visit the ice cream van on the beach
• Make ice lollies
• Help cook dinner

I’ve included some activities to keep their little brains active.

• Summer reading challenge
• Write and send a postcard
• Keep a Summer diary
• Paint rocks
• Offer your help to Gran
• Map reading and exploration
• Science experiment
• Wash the car
• Write to a pen pal
• Make a video

Games and activities we could do when I here the cry ‘I’m bored’ !

• Lego day
• Make an obstacle course
• Face paints
• Build a den
• Family games night
• Blow bubbles
• Painting
• Sidewalk chalk
• play board games
• play cricket

I think I’ve got every eventuality covered for an action packed summer!

If you wanted any holiday activity inspiration at all – I’ve made our list into a 50 things to do printable I’ve changed a few days out that were very local/specific things to us into more generic days outs.

 

This printable to free to use for personal use.

I’ve created a notice board area for our list and our Summer holiday plans. (Printable calendar courtesy of StudioDIY 

Have an amazing start to the Summer and I’ll be back to share more creative ideas soon.

Lezah x

My thoughts on slime

This week the news has seen safety warnings over slime toys. If you are a parent or carer to a slime loving child I urge you to take a read. Click here.

Before the news broke on the Which? findings for several slime products on the market my thoughts were – It’s not something I’ve experimented with, perfected or had CE tested. Of course it would be cool but Dotty Dough is cooler!

These headlines on the news got me thinking about what is so great about Dotty Dough and on the whole all homemade playdough recipes. Made from all edible non-toxic ingredients – Side note here, your child really shouldn’t be eating playdough and consuming high levels of salt can be dangerous (this goes for pets too).

I’m fully open to sharing the ingredients in my recipe, they are printed on the label as per requirements!

Ingredients in Dotty Dough: Wheat flour, Water, Salt, Vegetable Oil, Cream of Tartar, Food colouring. Glittery dough contains non-toxic glitter.

Not only am I armed with the knowledge that these are safe non-toxic ingredients, I’m armed with a CE test [CE marking is a certification mark that indicates conformity with health, safety, and environmental protection standards for products sold within the European Economic Area]. A testing house tests for among other things heavy metals and chemicals such as boron in the product. Unbelievable that some of the slime products taken off sale contained four times the limit of this chemical. I think it could be a case of the manufacturers changing the recipe after testing if tested at all. For myself continuity is a huge part of making Dotty Dough for sale. 

Of course I am no expert on chemical testing in toys, I worked with trading standards to get my Dotty Dough on the market. It was a slow but positive experience. They helped me develop labeling and packaging that conformed to safety standards. Recording of batches and samples is also a big part of quality control.

My thoughts on slime now? If big companies can’t get it right then that is a big worry, parents be careful, do your research and stick to what you know. I’m always happy to answer your questions on any of the dough I make or tools I stock. want to know more about how to get the best out of your Dotty Dough? Read our information page.

Thank you for reading such a wordy post.

Lezah x

World Emoji Day

World Emoji Day is an unofficial holiday celebrated on July 17. The day is deemed a “global celebration of emoji”

I celebrated World Emoji Day by taking to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and asking YOU to challenge me to make an emoji out of Dotty Dough.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys were a popular choice – Challenge accepted!

I think they turned out quite well. I can’t wait to see what my little critics think of them when they get home from school. Here’s some more emojis I’ve made in the past.

And a personal favourite of mine.

Thanks for reading!

Best Teacher free printable

Create a fast, easy and cheap teacher thank you. I’m not saying mess free because ya know!

 

 

Click to down load your free printable >Best teacher

(Set to A4 size) Print it off and get the paints out. Here’s a top tip if you don’t have paint or your little one doesn’t like painting their hands – simply draw around their hands with a felt tip or pencil.

Don’t forget to fill in the details at the bottom.

Please let me know how you got on and if your child’s teacher loved it.

New Product – Unicorn box

Unicorn boxes are a thing because we aren’t over the Unicorn craze just yet.

I went ahead and created the ‘Unicorn Box’ which is a great play set and/or gift. Don’t worry no actual Unicorns are being kept in boxes just play dough ones!

A personal touch adding the child’s name really does complete this as a perfect gift. My thinking is the named box with it’s cute Unicorn eyes and horn will double as a cute keepsake box .

Thanks for reading, Lezah x

 

 

Teacher gift ideas

It’s that time of year again and teacher gifts are on my mind. In my search to find the perfect gift I’ve discovered an amazing selection that’s too good not to share.

1. Something personal – Teacher Badge Card

A card and gift in one – Brilliant!

Colour Me Fun 

2. Something beautiful – Embroidery Hoop

I’ve admired Pixiecraft’s work for a long time and this is simply beautiful with the right amount of sentiment.

Pixiecraft

3. Something practical – Pop art teacher stamp

You are absolutely spoiled for choice here. I chose this awesome pop art stamp but there has got to be something for every teacher in this shop!

The Serious Stamp Company

4. Something for the whole school – Just add a cuppa

And by whole school I mean the teachers and staff (sorry kids!)

The Happy Mail

5. Something fun – pencil socks

These quirky pencil socks are perfect for any fun loving teacher.

Lucky Dip Club

6. Something from the heart – Plant pot marker

I love this wooden plant pot marker as I feel you could pop it in any pot or flower posy which you can source to suit your budget or your teachers personal tastes.

HerestousUK

7. Something intelligent – Grammar Pencils

I think these brilliant pencils will appeal teachers and their staff room humor.

Newton and the Apple

8. Something quirky – pencil earrings

The pencil theme runs strong as I am a self confessed stationery addict! These are also a throwback to the pencil shaving earrings my primary school teacher used to wear.

Adventures and Tea Parties

9. Something from the whole class – Finger print tree

See number 10.

10. Something crafty – Finger print tree

Yes the last two are the same. It’s time to get your art on and make a gift from the whole class with this printable finger print tree. Feeling extra crafty? Draw your own tree.

 

The Arty Apples

 

Thanks for reading, I hope you’re feeling inspired to go nail those teacher gifts.

All this good stuff and more can be found on my Pinterest board.

 

Lezah x