Salt Dough Ornaments

This year I am doing more DIY gifts than ever, and even my children are making little gifts for their friends. When I was young, I loved making salt dough figurines or ornaments. I totally forgot about this fun easy craft until my cousin told me I should make salt dough ghosts for my Halloween party. That didn’t happen, BUT the kids made salt dough ornaments for Christmas presents for their friends! My son helped me make the dough and cut out the shapes…and run his cars through the dough making “roads.” Then my girl helped us paint them. Here’s the easy…and a touch messy skinny:

All you need is:

Cheap flour, salt (I used plain old Morton), and the water you have on tap
Cookie cutters – I bought Christmas cookie cutters at Target
Mixing bowl
Rolling pin (optional – I just used my hands)
Jelly roll or cookie pan (for drying the ornaments)
Paint and paint brushes – preferably acrylic, but if you can stand it model paint is awesome because it dries shiny
String, ribbon, twine, yarn – whatever you have on hand that will look nice to hang the ornament on your tree

Directions:

2 cups flour
1 cup salt
3/4 to 1 cup water

Pour all the ingredients in the bowl and mix it up. Knead together to form a dough. Start with 3/4 cup water and add as you need it. Roll it out with your hands or a rolling pin to as thin as you can get it – about 1/4″ is what I did. Cut out your shapes and lay on a foil-lined jelly roll pan. This recipe made about twelve 3″ ornaments and fifteen 1″ ornaments (or super cute as gift tags!). Let them dry like that for a few days or put them in the oven at 200 degrees for a few hours. Just check every 30 minutes to make sure they are drying and not browning. Paint them and then string them up!

Now, we weren’t as fancy schmancy as Katy Elliott’s DIY: Salt Dough Ornaments (wow! beautiful!), but we aspire to get there!