Are your children eager to give their own gifts to loved ones this holiday season? If so, why not whip them up a simple batch of dough and let them create their own salt dough ornaments to give?! These are not just limited to kids either, the sky is the limit with what you do with this dough!
You can do what we did here and make some ornaments with them. However you can also use them to make magnets, gift tags, place cards, embellish napkin rings, handprint or footprint art…the options go on and on. You can keep them simple {like we did here!} or you can go all out and paint and decorate until your little heart’s content!
Ingredients Needed:
- 1/2 cup of salt
- 1 cup of flour
- 1/2 cup of lukewarm water
Simple. As. That. {{I am thinking that you could also add some food coloring here to tint your dough}}. I mixed up a batch, put both boys at the kitchen table with cookie cutters, letter stamps and Christmas related stamps. I let them have at it. I rolled some out and off they went! Ryan really had more fun trying to eat it. Let me give you a rendition of the afternoon:
Me: Don’t eat this guys, it will not taste good.
Ryan: Me eat it mom?
Me: No don’t eat this it’s icky tasting.
Ryan: {{taking a taste}} Ewww…MOM…this is ICKY!
Me: I told you not to eat it! {fishing dough out of his mouth}}
{{re-rolling him a flat pad of dough and walking away}}
REPEAT CONVERSATOIN x 10! Luckily it won’t hurt them!
Michael on the other hand had a great time. He used the letter stamps to make names for everyone in the family and then he use the Christmas stamps to make fun designs on ones…he was being really creative!
It works best if you are spelling out a name, to stamp the name FIRST then use the cookie cutter to cut the shape out. That way you can center it perfectly or get the right angle to make it look awesome.
Bake them at 200F for 3 hours on a parchment paper lined baking sheet!
From here you can paint them, add glitter, mod podge them with some dimensional magic…options are endless. Once all the cookie cutting was done…Ryan was full on icky dough and Michael had had enough sitting still so I just sprayed mine with a clear coat of spray sealer and strung on some ribbons!
I am going to use the cute heart and tree tags to embellish my gift wrapping and then I also made one using my “To: From”:” stamp…that might just be a gift tag itself! After it was baked I used a fine tip sharpie to trace the words and make them stand out!
What would you do with yours?!?
In case you missed them, you can check out all my other ornaments too!
Handprint Snowman Family Ornament
Snowman Ornament
Rudolph Ornament
Puzzle Piece Snowflake Ornament
You can find all the posts for this series by clicking the button below! Also feel free to sign up for email notifications of my posts! You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter!
Comments & Reviews
Dona says
Very cute! I love that you added your conversation with Ryan. Makes it so real! And yet another idea that has to go in the “Next Year” file! You are awesome, girl!
Christy says
Great idea! I love the idea of using them as gift tags, too!