Faux Starfish Made With Homemade Playdough!

Yes...you read that right....the starfish in these photos are made out of PLAY DOUGH.....
HOME MADE play dough that cost virtually pennies to make! Over at Twigg Studios there was a post about making starfish with air drying clay...which looked pretty easy to do.
Well I wanted to make some of these...but I didn't want to go out and buy clay...
HMMMMM....but I have made a lot of play dough.....
and I remembered that when the kids didn't get all the pieces picked up.... it would certainly "air dry" all over what ever surface they left it on!
SO I made some Play Dough using this recipe:
1 cup flour
1 cup water
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1/3 cup salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Put 1 cup of flour, 2 teaspoons of cream of tarter, and 1/3 cup of salt in a pan and mix together. Add 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil.
Turn your burner on medium/low and stir until the mixture "comes together". This usually takes only a couple of minutes. Remove from pan and cool. Knead to a smooth consistency once the dough is cool enough to handle.
Then I made my starfish.....
Basically I just played around with shapes and textures.!
I used a fork to make textures....and just pinched and shaped them into reasonably "authentic looking" starfish shapes...
I put them out in the sun to dry....figuring they would dry quickly....
except the humidity the day I did this was about 98%....
and then I left them outside overnight!
BIG MISTAKE!....they were almost dripping with the dew....what was I thinking!!!????
So I popped them on a cookie sheet and baked them at 200 degrees for a couple of hours....
That got the drying process underway....and they completely dried in 2 more days!
BTW...patience is not one of my strong suits....so waiting was really hard!
Then I just used craft paint to give them a finished look....and I think they look pretty authentic....if you don't get tooooo close!
Don't you think this would be a delightful craft project to do with kids?