Friday, December 5, 2008

Salt Dough Ornaments

Yesterday I made Christmas tree ornaments out of salt dough with my son and the little girl I baby sit. It will be their first Christmas, and every child needs a "First Christmas" ornament, so why not one that is personalized?

I used this recipe I found online for salt dough, which worked great. (In the future, if I was only making one or two ornaments, I would just make half a batch.)

½ cup salt
1 cup flour
½ cup water

Directions:
-Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.
-Mix together, salt, flour, and water until dough is formed.
-Knead the dough on a floured surface until the mixture is elastic and smooth. If dough is too sticky, sprinkle with flour, continue to do so until stickiness is gone. Do not add too much flour, this will dry out the dough and will cause it to crack before you get a chance to bake it.
-Roll out the dough to about ¼” thick with a rolling pin that has been dusted with flour.
-Use cookie cutters or mold the dough into a circle and push child's hand onto circle.
-Use a toothpick to make a hole toward the top of the shape. Poke the toothpick into the shape, then holding toothpick straight up and down, make a circular motion as if you were stirring something. Keep circling until the hole is the size you want.
-Place all shapes onto an ungreased cookie sheet and place into the preheated oven.
-Bake for 2 hours. Note: Because I didn't roll my dough thin enough, I needed to cook mine longer!
-Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.

I decided to paint the ornaments, at least the hand prints, so that they would stand out more. I used some acrylic paint I had left over from a project last Christmas (PS: if you live in Provo and want to paint your ornaments with red, green, or white, you can come use my paint!)
Here's how they turned out without and with paint: (The paint is shiny because it's still wet in the picture)



This was a quick project, completed in an afternoon. And I think they turned out well. Merry Christmas!