How to Make Salt Dough Ornaments

****I don't know what happened to my pictures! I'm going to leave this blog post up, for the directions....meanwhile, I'm hunting down my pictures in the blogosphere picture graveyard...

Yesterday I posted how to make cinnamon applesauce Christmas ornaments so today I wanted to post how to make salt dough ornaments. Once again, these are super easy and kid friendly.

These are ornaments and are NOT edible.

This is all you need:

Flour

Salt

Mix 2 cups flour and 1 cup of salt in a bowl. Use a fork and mix well.

Next, add 1 cup lukewarm water - a little at a time. I put in about 1/3 cup at once then mixed well with my fork. Added a second 1/3 cup and mixed well with fork. So on and so forth.

When mixed as well as you can with the fork, it's time to get your hands dirty.

Knead your dough with your hands (I keep mine in my bowl, I'm all about easy cleanup).

The more your knead your dough, the smoother your dough will be.

**If you want to mix your dough and make ornaments later, just store the dough in an airtight container until you're ready to use (will store for at least a day or two).

Next, lay some plastic wrap on the counter. Put a smidgen of flour on the plastic wrap so your dough won't stick. Use about 1/4 of your dough at a time.  Put another piece of plastic wrap on top so your dough is sandwiched between the plastic wrap. Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Take your rolling pin and roll out dough to 1/4" to 1/3" thick.

Remove your top plastic wrap and use cookie cutters to cut out the shapes you want.

You can do a lot of things with your salt dough. My Christmas tree is decorated primitive, so I wanted some ornaments that would look old and "grungy".

Put some cinnamon, instead of flour, on some plastic wrap and knead some dough in it. Use the cinnamon to coat the dough so that the plastic and rolling pin don't stick.

I have some older cookie cutters that I can't use for cookies. They are much too thin and detailed and the cookies burn/get too hard too easily if I use them. I used those cookie cutters for my "grungy" ornaments. I had to roll the dough to about 1/8" thickness for these. 

Place cut out shapes on a piece of plastic wrap to dry. Use a straw to make a hole for ribbon or an ornament hook.

If you want any designs in your shapes, now is the time to do it. I wanted some patchwork stars, so I took a toothpick to score designs in them.

Just allow to air dry for a day or two (depending on thickness of your shapes), then you can paint, add ribbon, hot glue decoration - whatever you want to do with them. Turn a couple times a day so they dry on all sides.

**You can bake these as well - put oven on 200 degrees and bake till dry. Can take anywhere from 1 - 3 hours depending on the thickness of your shapes.

Now, I think I will go bake some goodies. My whole house smells yummy with all this cinnamon in the air, but not a bit of it is edible.  Have fun making ornaments with your family!
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