Have you ever made salt dough Christmas ornaments! When I was a small children I made ornaments with my Mum and sister. My parents still have some of them in the ornament boxes. They are easy to make and look great on the tree!
Here is the recipe. Once they have air dried for a few days you can paint them, put glitter on them, or glue any other embellishments on them.
4 cups of flour
1 cup of salt
1 1/2 cup warm water (maybe a bit more)
Grab your large mixing bowl, and add in the flour and salt. Stir until well combined. Then, slowly stream in the warm water while stirring. Keep stirring until you’ve added all the water.
You’ll get to a point where it is too hard to stir with a spoon. Put it down and use your hands to get in there and mix it well.
Once the dough starts to come together, keep kneading with your hands for a few minutes until the dough is smooth and pliable.
Put down a large piece of parchment paper, and place a good-sized chunk of dough in the middle. Place another large piece of parchment on top.
Roll out the dough until 1/8″ thick. You want to err on the side of a thinner dough. Too thick, and the ornaments tend to split or break easily because of air pockets that get trapped in the middle.
Remove the top sheet of parchment, and then using cookie cutters, cut into the dough—do not try to remove the cut out pieces! You want those to stay on the parchment.
When you’re finished cutting the pieces, peel away the excess dough, leaving behind the shapes on the parchment.
Take a drinking straw, and poke a hole in the top of each ornament for a ribbon to hang from. Make sure to blow out the plug in the end of the drinking straw before you go to the next ornament.
Transfer the whole parchment paper and shapes onto a baking sheet. Bake the ornaments in a 300°F oven for about an hour. This isn’t an exact science, because inevitably, your shapes won’t be 100% even in thickness. They are done when they feel hard. They are really done if they start to brown (no worries, that’s something we can fix later!). Let the ornaments cool completely before proceeding to the next step.
Now we get to the really fun part—decorating! If you prefer the rustic, classic look of the salt dough, you can hang the ornaments as-is. But I think part of the fun of making salt dough ornaments is getting out the glitter and making a holiday mess.
