Salt Dough Recipe

Use this for Halloween Decorations, Christmas Ornaments & Decorations, Gift Tags, Placecards, Necklaces, Lapel Pins, Magnets, etc. Could hot glue small ornaments to Greeting Cards too!

Toddler can help mix up the ingrediants, make some 'creations', and/or paint your creations. A project for any age!

½ cup salt
1 cup flour
½ cup water

1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.

2. Mix together, salt, flour, and water until dough is formed.

3. Knead the dough on a floured surface until the mixture is elastic and smooth.
If dough is too sticky, sprinkle with flour, continue to do so until stickiness is gone. Do not add too much flour, this will dry out the dough and will cause it to crack before you get a chance to bake it.

4. Roll out the dough to about ¼” thick with a rolling pin that has been dusted with flour.

5. Use cookie cutters to cut out as many shapes as you want.

6. Use a toothpick to make a hole toward the top of the shape. Poke the toothpick into the shape, then holding toothpick straight up and down, make a circular motion as if you were stirring something. Keep circling until the hole is the size you want. Or insert a paperclip.

7. Place all shapes onto an ungreased cookie sheet and place into the preheated oven.

8. Bake for 2 hours.

9. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.

10. Paint.

11. When paint is dry, use glitter glue or glitter paint to put a sparkling cover coat on your ornaments.

12. Spray with varnish

13 When dry, thread ribbon through hole and tie in a knot in the back.


Tips, Techniques, Ideas:
http://www.angelfire.com/mo/creativeclutter/saltornaments.html

TIPS ON COLOURING DOUGH:
* Food colouring (red, green, blue, or yellow). Two or more food colours can be combined to make different colours and shades or for a marbled dough effect.

* Add spices that act as natural dyes e.g. cinnamon, curry powder, saffron or paprika.

* Add cocoa powder or instant coffee for different hues of brown.

* Wearing protective gloves add a little paint to the mixture then knead the dough until the paint is uniformly distributed through the mix.

Some pictures taken from the internet as ideas & examples: