Simple Salt Dough Christmas Decorations

Craft activities have never really been a thing that comes naturally to me.  I love doing crafts with the children although I often have this idyllic idea in my head of us all sitting around the table happily creating things of wonder, but the reality is that this isn't always the case.  Well not in my experience anyway.  But one thing I can do and never fails is Salt Dough.  It's easy to make and always looks effective and once it has been cut out, shaped and baked, you can let the children loose with a paint brush.

I have made Salt Dough decorations a few times and so A and I decided to make some this year, both for our own Christmas tree and to give away as presents to relatives.

First of all you need to make your Salt Dough;

Salt Dough Recipe



200g Plain Flour
400g salt
150mls water

Method

Turn the oven on very low - 50 c or Gas Mark 1

Put the salt and the flour into a large bowl. Add the water slowly and mix thoroughly. You might find that you don't use all of the water but you need to be able to knead your dough into a soft ball that isn't too sticky.

Roll out on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of about 5mm.

Cut out your shapes and use a straw to press out a hole at the top if you to make a hanging decoration.

Put the shapes on a baking tray and bake for 3-4 hours until hard.

Once we had our decorations cooked and cooled, we just used normal paint to paint them. A loves pink and determinedly painted most of them pink. In a desperate bid to add some colour to the proceedings, I randomly painted a few different stars bright colours.

Once the paint was dry, I used a permanent black marker to write NOEL on four of mine and then A and I used some glitter paint we picked up from ELC to give our decorations a nice sparkly finish.  If you wanted to give them an extra coating of PVA glue, you could do for extra shine and protection.

I used some silver elastic to hang A's decorations and for mine I simply used some curling gift ribbon and hung them on the mantel piece.

As A made quite a few pink glittery stars, I wrapped a few in cellophane and we have given them away as presents and they have all been well received.