Handmade Holiday : Salt Dough Ornaments

When I was a kid, my family made salt dough ornaments all together. Mom and Dad got into their own creations (a Navy football player, Raggedy Ann and Andy). I had a lopsided snowman and my sister, Katie’s looked a bit better. Passing the tradition on to the little ones, we decided to make some. I made a double recipe so that we could give some to different friends since Cami has already brought up random people she wants to love on this Christmas.

Here is the simple recipe we used:
1/2 cup of salt
1/2 cup of water
1 cup of flour

We rolled out the dough and used cookie cutters to make shapes (you can shape them yourself without cutters if you like). We poked holes in the top of each ornament and then set them in the oven at 200º for 6 hours or overnight.

The next night we decorated the ornaments. I am participating in the Elmer’s Glue Craft-Along, so they send me a few products I’ll be sharing with our crafts the next couple weeks. One of the products they sent were these Elmer’s Painters.


We used them to “paint” little designs on our ornaments. Chris made some really fun snowflakes with lots of tiny dots, Cami did the same, I loved making swirls and stripes. Noah just loved sitting with Chris, it was precious watching them work together.

After they dried, I put a coat of varnish on it just to give it that extra shine.

I used a 1/8 inch ribbon to string through the ornament.

They turned out great. We still have about 6 to decorate. I want to do them a little different and I can’t decide what to decorate them with yet… sharpie doodles or acrylic paints?

Tagged as: handmade holiday