Salt dough

I shared the recipe for these a couple of years back but I thought I would make an updated post…

We put our tree up this weekend and while it went up I decided not to put all of the old salt dough ornaments that we had made before. I did keep a select few, but I wanted to leave a bit of place so that we could make more and so we did…

Yesterday, I made the dough and we made our ornaments and then the boys used the rest to make their own things to then paint and play with (mostly furniture for Lego and Mega Blok figures) and we dried them during the afternoon…

The dough is simple to make and even more simple when using a Food Processor as it kneads quickly and the more you knead the dough, the more supple it will be.

For the dough you need:

2 cups of Flour
1 cup of Salt
1 cup of water

That’s it… dump it into a bowl or the food processor and knead until soft and supple, adding more flour if needed. I doubled the dough (but only used 1 1/4 cup of salt) so that we could have fun with more but really, the normal recipe would have been sufficient.

Roll out the dough and cut out the ornaments, or shape them freehand. Place in the oven at 250 and bake for about an hour or two until they are hard and dry. Don’t forget to poke holes in them before you stick them in the oven! You can use a straw to make the perfect sized hole.

Today we painted them. We actually don’t get the paints out that often around here so the kids always have a great time painting… I should really do it more often because I find it so much fun also!

(letting them dry after being painted)

After painting them, I added some Mod Podge to the ones I made to give them lustre. Using a water based paint and the Mod Podge wasn’t the best idea but I was able to work around it and work with the paint coming off slightly and I actually love the effect it made. (especially the snowman and the strawberry)

(in the strawberry, the wreath, and the cupcake, the hole for the string is going from side the side)