Making salt dough ornaments and salt dough gifts is a holiday tradition in our family as well as many others.
As we get close to the holidays and holiday crafting season, I thought I’d put together a post full of fun salt dough ornaments kids can make to inspire your family (and mine!).
Enjoy!
P.S. If you’re wondering how to make salt dough ornaments, I’ll include my favorite salt dough recipe and the basic instructions at the end of this post so once you get inspired by all these ideas you can get started creating with salt dough! Most of these posts I’m linking to have salt dough recipes and instructions as well…
11 Salt Dough Ornaments Kids Can Make
5 from The Artful Parent, 6 from other awesome sites…
2. Melted Crayon Salt Dough Ornaments
3. Beaded Salt Dough Ornaments
4. Stamped Salt Dough Ornaments
5. Basic Salt Dough Ornaments with Paint and Glitter
6. No Cook Cinnamon Ornaments (On Growing a Jeweled Rose)
7. Faux Silver Hearts (on Smile Monsters)
8. Marbled Salt Dough Ornaments (on Twodaloo)
9. Melted Bead Salt Dough Suncatcher Ornaments (on Homegrown Friends)
10. Rainbow Glitter Salt Dough (on The Imagination Tree)
11. DIY Handprint Ornament (on You’re So Martha)
6 More Fun Things to Make with Salt Dough
1. Make Salt Dough JOY Letters (on Nurture Store)
2. Stamped Salt Dough Gift Tags (on Design Editor)
3. Make Custom Cookie Stamps with Salt Dough (on Alpha Mom)
4. Salt Dough Heart Magnets (on Tinkerlab)
5. Give a Hug :: Salt Dough Letter Magnets for the Fridge (on Red Ted Art)
6. Make a Salt Dough Snowman (on Dollar Store Crafts)
BASIC SALT DOUGH RECIPE & INSTRUCTIONS
Mix 4 cups flour with 1 cup salt. Stir in 1 1/2 cups cold water. If the dough doesn’t come together, add another 1/4 cup of water or so.- Store in a plastic bag in the fridge until ready to use.
- Place a fist-size piece of dough on a sheet of parchment paper and cover with a second sheet of parchment paper. Roll out with a rolling pin to an 1/8 – 1/4 inch thick.
- Use cookie cutters to cut out desired shapes. With cookie cutters still in place (ideal) or after you take them out, pull away the extra dough from around the shapes, leaving the shapes in place on the parchment paper.
- Use the end of a drinking straw to poke a hole at the top of each ornament (for hanging).
- Decorate the ornaments (optional) with a.) stamps and a stamp pad, b.) poking a pattern of holes in the dough with the end of a straw, c.) poking glass beads into the dough.
- Gently move the sheet of parchment paper with salt dough ornaments onto a cookie sheet at bake in a 275F oven for 2-3 hours or until the salt dough is hard, but not browned. Let cool.
- (Optional) Add a coat of Mod Podge or some paint (we like BioColor paint
for these) and glitter.
- Add a ribbon through the hole and hang in the window or on the tree!
Lovely collection! Thanks for including my little JOY.
Thanks, Cathy! And you’re so welcome! Love that little JOY! :)
I’m getting excited about Christmas…thanks to you!! :) May I include ONE of your ornaments in my December ArtsyKidsNEWS with credit to you and a link to your blog? I’m thinking of “beaded salt dough ornaments”.
Absolutely, MaryAnn! Btw, when is your new book coming out? Can’t wait to see what you and Barbara have come up with!
Love these, my boys will too, this is so perfect for a cold winter afternoon craft! These make sentimental gifts for grandparents too!
Jean, what a lovely surprise to be included in your round up! Your site is such a source of inspiration to me. Thank you! You made my day brighter! Pinning and will share this week!
I’m totally inspired and surprised! I haven’t made salt dough since kindergarten and it didn’t look at all this good. Will have to try this with Freja soon. I’m certain she will love it!
How many ornaments will this recipe typically make?
roughly 15, depending on the size of your ornaments
What are the best beads to use for saltdough decorations? Do they have to be glass or can they be plastic like hama beads please? Thanks in advance : )
We used the plastic pony beads last year and they didn’t melt when we baked them in our ornaments.
We decorated our tree Thanksgiving evening but the problem I had was most of our salt dough ornaments from last year were stuck to the tissue paper that sandwiched all of our ornaments in their box… We made your basic salt dough recipe ( some with pony beads and the rest painted) all coated with mod podge. So…. How does everyone store theirs over time so they don’t all end up in the trash ( luckily we had a whole batch so the ones we had to toss weren’t as sentimental)???????
We just made the melted crayon ones for Valentine’s! Thank you for the great ideas!
Salt dough Cat http://diy-100ideas.com/salt-dough-cat/
Made these with my son when he was 3 or 4 still have a few. He also remembers making them and trying to eat one. LOL He is now 22. He has his own home now and starting his own Christmas traditions I’m going to invite him and his girlfriend over and make new salt dough ornaments with them for them and myself this year. Make new memories and share some nice old ones too. At least this time he’ll know not to try and eat them. LOL thanks for your new ideas.