These playdough cupcake party favors make the perfect goodie bag for your little ones birthday!
Hi friends,
This past week we celebrated my daughter 6th birthday! We decided to keep it low-key this year. We didn’t throw a party or anything but of course, we still wanted to make a special!
This year, her birthday landed on a school day. Which made her sad at first, but then we started talking. We realized we could send in a yummy birthday treat and all of her friends could celebrate with her!
She decided that she also wanted to send a little goodie bag like all of her other friends had been doing for their birthdays too! (admittedly, I didn’t even know the was a thing ?). Together, we landed on playdough cupcake party favors!
Playdough cupcake party favors are the perfect goodie bag! They’re “gender neutral”, aren’t junky and won’t send the kids into a sugar high! It’s a non-candy goodie bag idea that won’t break the bank either! These cheap party favors only cost me a total of $27! For a class of 24 kids, that comes to just over a dollar per goodie bag!
This post is all about playdough cupcake party favors!
How To Make Playdough Cupcake Party Favors
1. Make the playdough
The most important part to a playdough kit? Probably the playdough! lol
This is the exact recipe I used for our playdough:
– 2 Cups All Purpose Flour
– 1/4 Cup Salt
– 1/4 Cup Corn Starch
– 4tsp Cream of Tartar
– 3tbs Vegetable Oil
– 2 Cups Water
– 1/4 Cup Vanilla Extract (We used imitation bc its way cheaper! Smell it and add more if you want!)
Add all of the ingredients to a pot. Mix. Heat over medium low. Stir constantly till dough forms and starts to pull away from the edges.
The key (in my experience) is to not over cook it! Once the dough starts to form and isn’t too sticky, take it out and kneed it with your hands (carefully, it will be hot!). If you wait till it’s a giant ball, it probably won’t be as soft.
2. Get some cupcake accessories
Next, pick up a few accessories. You can’t make a cupcake without things like a cupcake holder or candles!
IMPORTANT: I’m only listing photos for inspiration! Unless you have the money to spare or want to go the extra mile and make these “nicer”, don’t use all of these links! 90% of what we used in our goodie bags was from Dollar Tree! I’ll list under the photo the links to the exact products!
Cupcake holders
These actually are the exact cupcake holder we ordered. They were the perfect amount and super cheap! I will say, they aren’t the best quality. They are super thin & flimsy but they work just fine for the price and what we need them for!
Fake cherries
These are not the exact ones we bought but are probably the best deal you’ll find! We got these cherries at hobby lobby. At the time, they were half off so they were around $6 for two packs. We gave each kid a “bunch” of two cherries instead of just single ones. If you do buy these from hobby lobby you could totally buy one pack and cut each bunch making 26 single cherries. Personally, I think the amazon ones look nicer with the green stem though.
Birthday candles
A birthday cupcake should definitely include a candle! These candles are so dang adorable if you want to spend the extra dollars. If not, just pick up a pack from Dollar Tree! This set of candles has more than enough and work just fine too!
Fake sprinkles
Colorful Fake Sprinkles Accessories
3. Package everything up
Now the tedious but exciting part.. putting everything together!
Cellophane bags
I packaged everything up in a simple cellophane bag. Don’t buy these from Amazon, the loot bags from the Dollar Tree work just fine! They come in sets of 20 so we just bought two!
Empty containers
I went back and forth so many dang times with how I wanted to package the playdough.
My thought was if I buy large enough air proof containers, not only will the playdough last longer but I could also double as the entire package. A conatiner with enough room could have the playdough at the bottom and then still have enough room to neatly place the accessories on top, in it too.
Ultimately, I needed up just going with a simple container. I bought these small storage containers from Dollar Tree. They come in packs of 10 so we just bought three packs!
Small containers
40 Plastic Mini Containers with Lids
If you’re making these for a larger amount of kids, these Amazon containers might be a decent choice. If not, again, the Dollar Tree containers work just fine too! I picked up these mini containers (the six pack) and they held the perfect amount of “sprinkles”
4. Make gift tags
If you or kiddo is good at drawing, I’d high recommend personally drawing a cupcake. You can scan the drawing, adjust the size, make copies and write a message on the back.
If you can’t draw, you can do the same as me and just “steal” a photo from google.
I wanted to be a bit extra. I could write an entire hour long story time about how much this backfired but I’ll spare you! LOL If you have a Cricut, you can follow along below.
How To Make Double Sided Gift Tags
Heres what I did:
First, I grabbed this photo from iheartcraftythings.com:
Then, you’ll want to open up Design Space for your Cricut and import the photo.
1. Import the photo, resize to about 2.5 inches, duplicate and align. Align vertically & horizontally!
2. Grab all the images, duplicate again and “offset” them by 0. 
3. Now, delete the top layer to reveal a black layer underneath
4. Next, add your text and “attach” the text to the offset cupcakes.
IMPORTANT: Before you print, make sure you change the black cupcake to white! Otherwise it WILL print black instead of just the text.
5. Make sure to attach each group of cupcakes (The colored cupcakes are one group. The cupcake shapes with the text are another group) Then you’re almost ready to print!
– Again, I grabbed these screenshots just for this post and it totally slipped my mind but REMEMBER, change the cupcakes with text to WHITE! –
6. Okay, this next part gets a little confusing and depends on what printer you’re using. I have just a standard printer. You put paper in on the top, in the back and it spits it out at the bottom.
For this type of printer here’s what you’ll want to do:
Print out your first layer as normal. (as pictured above). Then, when it comes out at the bottom pick up and flip it from the bottom, up. Now the paper facing you should be the blank side. The printed side should be upside down and facing away from you. Stick your paper back into the printer just like that.
Before you print the other side, make sure you move the photo down so that the black outline “box” is towards the bottom. (shown below). This is super important, otherwise the text and photo will not line up properly!
7. Finally, add the double sided paper to the mat and cut with your Cricut!
Thats it – TA-DA!
5. Add final touches
Use a hole puncher and punch out a small hole towards the top. Add some string and tie it to your playdough cupcake party favors!
@angiebecker_ Cupcake classroom birthday favors 🧁🍒✨ #PINKHolidayRemix #birthday #kidsactivities #momlife
