This year, we wanted to make some of our own ornaments to go on the tree. After tackling some of the crafts from our Wild & Willow box, Jupiter had the idea to make some salt dough ornaments – and it turns out they are pretty simple and easy to make. The kids each made their own, using a bunch of different cookie cutters, and Jupiter made one of the classic handprint ornaments with Pancake’s hand! It came out pretty nicely.
Salt Dough:
- 250g Plain Flower
- 125g Salt
- 125ml Water
Mixing roughly these measurements together will give you salt dough. The dough itself is a slightly crumbly in texture, but once it’s rolled out, it should work fine. We added a handful of glitter into each one, as the kids wanted them to be sparkling. We rolled our ornaments to be quite thin, that way they baked quickly, but you can use this dough to make thick and bake it for longer if you want. When it comes to decorating, you can use any type of cookie cutter to make any design. We punched holes in the top with a straw and baked them at 50 degrees Celsius for about 4 hours – or until hard.
Then we took them out, got out the sharpies, and started drawing. We also added string to them so that they can hang. All of the children were pretty proud of their various designs and loved seeing their ornaments on the tree. When it came to making an ornament for Pancake, Jupiter just smooshed his paw (gently) into the dough and it took. When it was baked, she wrote his name on the outside and coloured in the paw print mark.
All of these ornaments came out really lovely and it’s great to be able to have them for years to come, as they are unique to the children. This recipe is very simple and the cookies cutters are something we have all of the time, so if you’ve got these basics around your house, there is no reason not to make some salt dough ornaments yourself.
This post is a part of our Blogmas series, with each and every post being about Christmas or Winter.
I’ve been debating doing them with all of our pets. I love the idea of having their paw prints to put on the tree year after year! Especially with all of our pets falling under the classification of ‘senior’ now (physically anyway, not so much mentally…) Thanks for sharing!
I hope that you can make them! They do come out so cute.
I tried this with my siblings in December too! Yours came out so much nicer than mine. I think it’s because I was too impatient to wait 4 hours, so they puffed up. Definitely, a fun project to do during the quarantine.
Lovely post!
Ours did not puff up, luckily! I saw yours on your blog – your paw prints came out so good!