How to make salt dough ornaments

Step 1: how to make salt dough ornaments

Salt dough ornaments are quick and easy to make and they last forever! I'm pretty sure my mom still has some of my salt dough creations from elementary school. :D

Best of all, you can make salt dough ornaments just from things you've got around the house, so they're a fantastic snow day project.

I've left my ornaments plain, but you can paint them, add glitter to the dough, add essential oils for scenting it, etc. They're super customizable!

Step 2: Ingredients + tools

Ingredients:

3/4 - 1 cup room temp water
1 cup salt
2 cups flour + more for dusting the dough and your workstation

A note about flour - if you want whiter ornaments, buy bleached flour. I almost always buy unbleached flour, which is why mine are a cream color.

Tools:

baking sheet
parchment paper
wax paper
rolling pin
straw or something to poke holes
string/wire for hanging
paint, glitter, sticks and leaves, etc for decoration
cookie cutter or other objects to make your shapes

Step 3: Make the dough

Mix together the water, flour and salt. Start with 3/4 cup water and work your way up - you don't want to add the whole cup at once - it may be too much! You want a fairly stiff dough - not too wet! Mix with a spoon or spatula until everything comes together.

Now you'll want to lightly flour your work surface and plop the dough out on it. Sprinkle a little more flour on top of the dough and start kneading. When it gets sticky, add more flour. Keep kneading and adding more flour (if you need it) until it's nice and smooth and only slightly sticky. I kneaded mine for about five minutes.

You'll know it's done with it's firm and you can press it down and leave smooth imprint like the third photo.

If you're having issues with it being sticky, let it sit for 15-20 minutes and try again. That will allow it to dry out a little bit. :)

Step 4: Roll out the dough

Flour a sheet of wax paper and lay the dough on top. Flour the top of the dough and place another sheet of wax paper on top.

Roll the dough out until it's 1/4 inch thick. :)

Step 5: Cut your shapes + decorate

I pressed leaves and berries into my dough before cutting - this makes simple and pretty ornaments. :)

I used things around the house to cut out shapes - large pill bottle, tupperware, jar lids, cookie cutters.

If you're having problems getting nice shapes out of your dough, cut the shapes, pull away the excess dough and let the shapes dry for a few minutes. It will make it easier to get them off the paper if the flour didn't work!

Step 6: Poke holes and dry!

As I finished the ornaments, I transferred them to parchment paper on a baking sheet and poked holes in them.

You can either air dry the ornaments or put them in the oven at 200 F for 2-3 hours. Keep in mind that how long your ornaments take to dry will depend on the humidity in and around your home, so it could take much longer!

I decided to do my drying the oven, but it's been so rainy here lately I had to dry them FOREVER. I ended up pulling them out and putting them on baking racks to dry out more.