The last of my holiday-DIY this year came in the form of the kids’ gifts for their friends at preschool. My friend Kim made candy cane play dough for her daughters’ day care friends and I was so thankful for the inspiration when I had to come up with inexpensive (not annoying) gifts for nine littles.
Thankfully the only thing I had to buy were jelly jars ($9 for a pack of 16), because I am running out of time to get everything done before Christmas and schlepping my little angels in and out of craft stores is my personal idea of hell. The card stock was leftover from a three years ago when I made my own holiday cards, the glitter in the play dough was leftover from the twins’ first birthday invites and the jingle bells were leftover from gift wrapping two years ago. The reindeer clipart is a free font from dafont.com called Xmas Cartoon.
To avoid going out and buying fabric for the jar tops, I just traced the circular jelly jar lids onto the holiday card stock and then cut the circles out. The secondary jar lid held the circles in place and hid the string that holds the gift tags/jingle bells (which are connected to a zot placed on top of the metal lid). The whole set up took me 45 minutes spread over two nights after the kids went to bed.
I used the same play dough recipe that I posted previously (here) and just added glitter and peppermint essential oil — which I bought at the Green Grocer — to the pot while the goo cooked and transformed into dough.
Their friends and their friends’ mommies loved it, which is awesome. Especially because this is one of those projects that looks like it takes a lot of time and effort, but really is so quick and easy.
