Every year at Christmas, I like to make or decorate ornaments with my kids. We’ve tried painting plaster ornaments, painting wooden ones, even making those candy cane ornaments out of beads and pipe cleaners. But the ones that I keep coming back to over again are salt dough ornaments.
Salt dough ornaments are amazingly simple to make with only 2 ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen–flour and salt. 2 parts flour, 1 part salt, mix with 1 part water and what you’ve got is a cookie-dough-like consistency that is perfect for rolling out and using those cookie cutters!
What I love about these ornaments is how versatile they are–you can use any cookie cutters you have on hand! You can even cut out your own shapes, freestyle. You can color the dough ahead of time with food coloring, or you can paint and decorate them after they’ve baked.
While the dough comes together with minimal effort, I will say that the process of rolling out the dough, cutting shapes and baking them *is* involved, just like making cookies would be. But that’s half the fun right? Kiddos being covered in flour, learning how to roll and cut dough. Picking their favorite shapes to make ornaments they will claim as theirs later on.
I also love that when the kids want to make Christmas ornaments, I don’t have to run to the store to try and find a kit or craft; we can just make them right then at home. Even better if we invite friends to join us for the decorating process!
Check out the recipe below to start making your salt dough ornaments this Christmas!
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Mix together the salt and flour in a large bowl.
- Add the water. Knead with your hands until the mixture becomes a dough-like-texture.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out your dough with a rolling pin and use cookie cutters to cut out shapes.
- Use a toothpick or something similar to make a small hole near the top of your dough shapes so that when they are dry, you can insert an ornament hook/string/ribbon.
- Place the shapes on baking trays.
- Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F and bake for 2 hours. If the ornaments still feel soft, bake for a bit longer until hard (but not brown in color).
- Once dry (and cooled), decorate with any craft supplies you'd like!
Looking for more fun and free ideas to make memories with your kiddos this Christmas? Check out this Outdoor Christmas Scavenger Hunt free printable!
