Salt Dough Ornaments

Pin from my Pintrest Board
"Christmas Present Ideas"

Well, remember I said a little something about mishaps for our blog?  Guess what!  Happened, happened and happened!! 

Last night I got a new post all ready, believe me I'm not the most savvy computer person, so it took me a while, but I got it all ready, pictures and all, hit "Preview", 'cause, you know, you wanna' make sure it looks good.  BAM!!  My computer freezes up on me!  But, I had a sleepover with the grandkids and we needed to do a remake of the salt dough ornaments (explanation to come later), so I decided to wait until this morning to post.  The kids are still sleeping, so wish me luck and pray my computer doesn't sleep again too!!   Here goes!!

Ok, so, Salt dough ornaments.  I found several different ideas and the one above is one I posted to my Pinterest board "Christmas Present Ideas".  I thought these would make great stocking stuffers from he kids to their families this year.  After all, what parent doesn't love anything their kids make!  So I mixed 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup salt an 1/2 cup water.  The recipe said to knead for 10 minutes. 

I had my three youngest grandchildren here that day, so we put the baby down for a nap and got to work!  We rolled out the dough to about 1/8 inch thick and cut out 3 large hearts, 2 Christmas trees and 6 small hearts for our projects.  The kids loved it and there was plenty of dough leftover for them to play with and make their own creations.

The kids made hearts with their fingerprints onto each one.  For the small hearts Landin did his own, both of my son's girls were here so for the small hearts I had them each make an imprint of their fingers for each side of the heart to form one heart with both their fingerprints.  I used an old ink pen to make the imprint of the year.  We just baked the Christmas trees as is because I had other plans for them.

Ok the mishap part.....  I used a recipe that said to bake them at 325 degrees for 1 1/2 hours.  They all turned out a dark brown, which I didn't mind so much but they also puffed up, unlike all the pictures I saw others had made.  I assumed it was because I baked them too long. 

Also, after they were baked I painted the Christmas trees and had the kids put their fingerprints to simulate the lights, but because they were puffy the paint made them extremely fragile and they broke. Those didn't even make it to Christmas!!!

The hearts however were a big hit!  With the small hearts we made key chains for the Dad's, bookmarks for the Moms and older sisters and dated Christmas ornaments out of the larger ones!  The kids were thrilled to have made everyone gifts and everyone was pretty impressed with them!  The directions had said to seal them with a clear sealer, but after the Christmas trees, I was afraid to put anything on them, so I left them as is.

A day or two after Christmas, my daughter found out that they also make excellent doggie treats!!  She noticed her lab licking the ornament hanging on their tree.  She shooed her away, not thinking anything about it but left the room and came back to no ornament on the tree and somehow the small heart on her bookmark mysteriously had disappeared!  Maybe the sealant was for more than one purpose! 

I also ask my daughter-in-law if she liked her bookmark we had made, she looked at me with a blank look on her face and said, "what bookmark".  It must have gotten mixed in with other used wrapping paper and disappeared.  The kids thought maybe their dogs had eaten hers, but since the whole thing was missing rather than just the heart, I'm thinking not. 

So,the request was made that we do a "take two".  It sounded good to me, because, for one, they must have been a good gift if they wanted replacements and two,  I wanted to see if the temp and baking time of the first round was the reason for the mishaps.  So, last night, we had a sleepover and did some "redos".   This time we used a different recipe that said to bake at 250 degrees for 1 hour.  They weren't quite so brown, but they still puffed up.  Personally, if they are gonna' puff up anyway, I liked the darker brown.....oh well.

I'm sure we will try this again, either for gifts or just for fun.  I'm thinking next time around  I will try making them a little thicker to see if that makes a difference.   We will see, but overall this was a lot of fun for both me and the kids.  That in itself made it worth doing!

Talk to you soon, my next project is "T shirt scarves". 



Scroll to Top