Homemade Salt Dough Ornaments

Many of you will remember a post from a  few weeks ago: 27 Ideas for  Low Budget Christmas. In that post, my friend Paula and I listed a bunch of ideas that you can do for Christmas without spending  lot of money. One of Paula’s ideas was making these salt dough ornaments.

I was very excited about this idea because we really can’t afford to buy our extended family presents this year and I thought these ornaments would make perfect homemade gifts for the grandparents! I started on Sunday night, and made the dough. Over the next few days I let my son paint them and he had a blast! Here is the recipe:

• 4 cups of flour
• 1 cup of salt
• 1 & 1/2 cups of water

How to Make:
1. Mix the above ingredients together. The dough may have a hard time sticking together, so just add a little bit of water until you have the right texture. I added a little bit here and there to help the dough out!
2. Knead the dough for 15-20 minutes. When done, roll the dough out until it’s roughly about 1/2 an inch thick or less.
3. Use cookie cutters to cut out ornaments or press your child’s hand into the dough and use a knife to cut the hand print out. Make a hole so you can hang it (I used the back of my son’s paintbrush), and use a safety pin to prick the dough to prevent air bubbles.
4. When finished, bake at 300 degrees for 25 minutes. If they are still soft, you can flip them over and heat for 5-10 more minutes.
5. Let cool and paint. You can use string to hang your ornaments or you can use Christmas colored pipe cleaners to hang them like I did. It was  lot easier to get through the holes with the pipe cleaners.
6. Use a magic marker to write your child’s name on the ornaments and the year. I also used the magic marker to make faces on the ornaments that were snowmen.