Salt Dough Decorations

The Christmas crafts have begun and first up were some simple salt dough decorations!

You will need

Salt

Plain flour

Water

Cutters

Paint and brush

Ribbon

Glitter, sequins, pens etc (optional)

The ratio I use is a portion of flour to half a portion of salt and half a portion of water. Firstly you need to mix the flour and salt together and then slowly add the water to create a soft dry dough - it shouldn't be sticky!

Knead for a few minutes until smooth and then roll the dough out to around 1cm in thickness.
If you do it any thicker it takes a lot longer for the decorations to dry and any thinner they can break.

This is a fun sensory activity for the kids to get stuck in with!

Use the cutters to cut out the shapes you require (we chose stars, Christmas trees and reindeer for a festive theme) then place them onto a baking tray.
Don't forget to make a hole in the top of each so you can hang them up, we used a straw to do this.

Place the decorations in the oven at 75 degrees for 90 minutes on each side.
You will know when they are done as they will be firm and slightly lighter in colour.

Jamster selected a HUGE paintbrush!

We used paint to decorate each and added some glitter for a pretty sparkle to finish.
We inserted ribbon through the holes to hang them from the tree with although you could easily make them into bunting.

We also used our hands to create some Santa decorations by cutting around each and pressing down firmly to leave finger indentations. These were baked in the same way and then decorated with red and white paint to look like Father Christmas.
We dabbed a little pink paint on too for blushed cheeks and used a felt tip pen for detailing.

What Christmas crafts have you been making?