2-Ingredient Cloud Dough with Lotion

This easy 2-ingredient cloud dough is made with Lotion and cornstarch. A versatile homemade kid playdough recipe perfect for sensory play activities and 100% natural.

2-ingredient Cloud Dough is a dough made with cornstarch and body lotion or baby oil. It’s a dough that parents and teachers love to use for kid sensory play activities because it can have many different textures.

In fact, contrary to regular playdough recipes, cloud dough even lets your kids experience different textures while you make it. When you first start mixing the ingredients together, it has a crumbly texture, like damp sand.

Then, as you squeeze it, it looks like Moon sand. It becomes moldable but still crumbles apart. Finally, after squeezing it for a few minutes and gathering the pieces together, it turns into soft, smooth play dough.

Ingredients and Substitutions

• Corn starch – see the paragraph below to read my recommendations on how to make cloud dough without cornstarch.
• Body lotion – we recommend using baby body lotion or plant-based natural body lotion. These body lotions contain no perfume and only natural ingredients that won’t create allergies or reactions to kids’ hands.

You can also decorate the dough with coloring or add-ins.

• Food coloring – this is optional but much more fun! You can use liquid or powdered food coloring. Many spices or food make great food coloring for play dough, like beetroot powder for a pink color, turmeric powder for orange, cinnamon for brown, and spirulina powder for a green/blue color. Other options are to buy liquid natural plant-based food coloring.
• Sprinkles or sparkles – you can add food sprinkles to the dough to add more sensory experience to this easy cloud dough recipe or sparkles to let the dough shine.

How To Make Cloud Dough With Lotion

All you need to make a cloud dough recipe at home with your kids are two ingredients plus decoration:

1. Like food recipes, craft recipes require precision. I recommend using proper measuring cups to measure your 1/2 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of lotion.
2. Make sure you fill the cup to the top, then level up to remove any extra. If you add too much corn starch, the texture will be very crumbly, like sand. On the other hand, too much lotion makes the dough super sticky.
3. In a large mixing bowl, add the body lotion and liquid food coloring if used. Use a silicone spatula or spoon to stir in cornstarch. It will look very dry and crumbly, like sand, and that’s normal.
4. Dig your hands in the mix and squeeze to bring all ingredients together. Watch out! If you add food coloring, it stains your hands easily. Kids don’t mind color on their hands but use gloves for kneading the dough if you do.

How To Play With Cloud Dough

There are many ways you can use cloud dough.

You can simply ask the kids to dig in and squeeze the ingredients together. Children love to play with cloud dough from the start of the recipe to the end. They will enjoy a three-step sensory experience:

• Crumbly like sand
• Damp sand sticks together when you apply pressure and then falls apart easily like moon sand.
• Soft play dough after a few minutes of hard squeezing, the dough is soft and moldable like homemade playdough.

Roughly mix the ingredients. Don’t squeeze and add them to any sensory bins. It will mimic the look and texture of damp sand.

It’s not the best moldable dough to play with, in the sense that cloud dough dries out fast and crumbles apart like Moon sand. So it’s not the best to create shapes or objects, but it is still very fun to squeeze. It is more like slime. You play with cloud dough for its fun texture, not to create things.

Frequently Asked Questions

More playdough recipes

For moldable playdough recipes, the kinds that resemble the store-bought ones, use my playdough recipes below:

How To Fix Dry Playdough?

Playdough Recipe Without Salt

Playdough Recipe with Cream of Tartar

Snow Dough Recipe

Cloud Dough with Lotion

An easy sensory 2-ingredient cloud dough for kids of any age.

4.50 from 2 votes

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Prep Time5 minutes mins

Active Time2 minutes mins

Total Time7 minutes mins

Yield: 1 batch

Author: Carine

Materials

• ½ cup Corn Starch
• ¼ cup Lotion or conditioner

Optional

• 2-3 drops Natural food coloring or 1 teaspoon spices * see notes

Instructions

• Measure all the ingredients precisely with measuring cups that you fill up to the top and level up.
• In a medium mixing bowl, add Conditioner or lotion, liquid food coloring if used, and corn starch.
• Stir with a spatula at first. It will form crumbly sand, that's normal, and kids love this part. Dig your hand in the mixture, squeeze and run the ingredients together to form a dough. It will look like damp sand that holds together as you apply pressure on it then crumbles again.
• After 1 minute of kneading the dough, it should form a moldable dough similar to classic playdough, but that breaks much more easily into pieces.
• Play with it as is or crumble in a plastic tub to create a sensory bin.

How to fix cloud dough?

• If the dough is too sticky, add more cornstarch, 1 teaspoon at a time, knead between each addition.
• If the dough is drying out – this always happens after 15-20 minutes – add more lotion, 1/2 teaspoon at a time, knead to incorporate, and adjust if needed.

How to store the dough?

• Store cloud dough in a sealed lightly oiled box for few weeks. The dough will dry as it goes, use the steps above to fix the texture.

Notes

You can use natural powders as food coloring. It won’t pop out as much, but they are natural and easy swaps if you don’t have food coloring at home:

• Beet powder for pink
• Turmeric for orange
• Cinnamon for brown
• Spirulina powder or Matcha powder for green/blue

 

Slime & Playdough Safety

Note: Making slime and Playdough is a science experiment. As a result, safety precautions must be taken! By making this slime or playdough, you agree to our site terms which you can read here.