Homemade Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments with Cookie Stamps - Curly Girl Kitchen (2024)

Make the most beautiful homemade salt dough ornaments for your Christmas tree with this easy recipe and assorted Christmas cookie stamps. This is a fun and creative project that the whole family can do together!

You might also love these iced snowflake cookies, raspberry thumbprint sugar cookies, and chocolate place card cookies.

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Why You’ll Love This Recipe

Fun for the Whole Family. Everyone can get involved in making salt dough ornaments, from making the dough, rolling and cutting “cookies” and painting the ornaments when they’re dried. My little boys absolutely loved making and painting their own set of ornaments to decorate our tree.

Versatile Possibilities. You can keep your ornaments simple and white with just a little glitter, hand paint them with craft paints, or just spray paint them. Cut them in any shape, or press the dough with cookie stamps. Use alphabet letter embossers to make an ornament with everyone’s name. And instead of hanging them on the tree, you could also use them as place cards for every place setting at Christmas dinner, or as stocking tags.

Just 3 Ingredients. You only need flour, salt and water to make the salt dough.

Lasts for Years. Enjoy these beautiful ornaments and the memories making them for years to come!

Perfect for Gifting. I just love giving homemade Christmas gifts. And these ornaments would make a beautiful gift for friends, family members, teachers and neighbors, or to include in a Christmas cookie box.

No Sugar. In the mood to cut and decorate “cookies”, but you don’t want to eat any more sugar this holiday season? This project provides all the satisfaction of creating something beautiful to enjoy and look at, without any of the calories.

See the recipe card at the end of the post for the full ingredients list and instructions.

Ingredients

• Flour. Use plain, all-purpose flour for making the dough.
• Salt. Use a finer grained table salt for your salt dough, rather than the coarse Kosher salt that I typically use in my recipes.
• Warm Water.

Tools and Equipment

• Assorted Christmas Cookie Cutters. You can use any shape cookie cutter you like, but I did find that simpler shapes work best. The more detailed and intricate the cookie cutter, the harder it is to get the salt dough out. A round scalloped cookie cutter looks really pretty for the ornaments embossed with everyone’s names.
• Assorted Christmas Cookie Stamps. Cookie stamps make really beautiful salt dough ornaments. The design is perfectly preserved as the ornaments dry. I have quite a collection of cast cookie stamps, including these Nordic Ware Holiday Cookie Stamps, Nordic Ware Starry Night Cookie Stamps, Nordic Ware Yuletide Cookie Stamps, and Nordic Ware Snowflake Cookie Stamps.
• Round Cookie Cutter or Biscuit Cutter. After pressing the dough with cookie stamps, you’ll need a round cutter to trim the excess dough from around the edges.
• Letter Embossers. This is optional, but if you want to stamp names or short phrases on your ornaments, you’ll need a set of mini snap together letter embossers. The letters look much better if you press them against an ink pad (such as one used for rubber stamps) first, before pressing them into the dough.
• Rolling Pin.
• Disposable Drinking Straw. You’ll use this to poke holes in the dough so that you can tie them with twine.
• Mod Podge. It’s important to seal your ornaments once they’re dried, so that they don’t absorb moisture from the air. Use Mod Podge (in matte) to seal the dough and give them a more finished look.
• Small Craft Brush. For brushing on the sealer.
• Extra Fine White Glitter. For shimmer and sparkle.
• Paint. You can use acrylic craft paint (water based, not oil based) to paint your salt dough ornaments, or just use a can of spray paint for a uniform look.
• Baking Sheets, Cooling Racks & Silpat Baking Mat. The cut ornaments will need to dry for several days on baking sheets and cooling racks, until completely hard.
• Thick Twine. Thin baker’s twine is really too flimsy for this project. I used a thicker natural jute twine and red jute twine. You can also use ribbon, but whatever you use, make sure the holes you’re poking in the dough are large enough to get your twine or ribbon through.
• Decorative Beads. On some of my ornaments, I added these pretty gold wood beads, which add lovely detail.

Instructions

Make the Salt Dough

• In a bowl, combine the flour and salt. Stir in the water until the dough is moistened, but not too wet or sticky.
• Knead the dough on a clean work surface for several minutes until smooth.

TIP: Salt dough starts to dry to the touch quickly, so when you roll out your dough, you need to work as quickly as possible when cutting and stamping your ornaments.

Cut the Ornaments

• For cutout ornaments using cookie cutters, lightly flour your counter and the top of the dough to keep it from sticking, and roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick. Cut as many ornaments as you can, and place the cut ornaments on a baking sheet lined with a silpat baking mat.

• Note: If you’ll be stamping names or words on the ornaments using letter embossers, do this immediately before the surface of the dough starts to dry. Stamped words look best if you first press the letter embossers on an ink pad (like one used for rubber stamps), before pressing them into the dough. (The next photo shows alphabet embossers stamping a chocolate cookie, but it works the same on the salt dough ornaments.)

• For stamped ornaments using cookie stamps, roll a ball of dough (about 2 tablespoons) smooth between your hands, and lightly dust the dough ball with flour. Flour your cookie stamps. Press the stamp straight down onto the ball of dough, until the dough spreads out just past the edges of the stamp. Lift the cookie stamp off the dough, and use a round cookie cutter or biscuit cutter to cut out the pressed ornament and remove the uneven edges.

• Place the ornaments on a baking sheet lined with a silpat baking mat. Note: Originally, I said to place the ornaments on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. However, sometimes the paper can wrinkle from the moisture in the ornaments, creating ripples and wrinkles on the ornaments themselves (which you can see a little in my gold-painted ornaments). A silpat will not do this. You may also be able to get away without the silpat, and just place the ornaments on a baking sheet.
• Don’t forget to poke the holes for the twine! A disposable plastic drinking straw or paper straw works well for this task.

Dry the Ornaments

• Let the ornaments dry for 3-4 hours on the baking sheet until the top of the dough looks dry and porous. Turn the ornaments over, and let dry until the bottom of the dough looks dry and porous.
• Now place the ornaments on a cooling rack, and let them sit until completely hard and dry. Don’t rush to place them on the cooling rack if they’re still damp, since the cooling rack will leave indentations on the dough if it’s still soft and pliable.
• Fully drying the ornaments could take anywhere from 2-7 days depending on their size and thickness. They need to remain on the cooling rack so that the air can circulate around all sides and thoroughly dry them out.
• Another option for drying your ornaments is to dry them in the oven at very low heat. Preheat your oven to its lowest setting (usually 175-200 F), and dry the ornaments in the oven, turning them every 30-60 minutes, until dry. Be careful not to use too high of heat, or they can turn brown. While this option is faster, personally I feel like the ornaments look better in the end when dried slowly at room temperature.

Seal the Dough and Add Glitter

• Using a small craft brush, brush a thin layer of matte Mod Podge over the tops, bottoms and sides of the ornaments (let one side dry before flipping them over to do the other side).
• Once the Mod Podge is completely dry, brush the tops of the ornaments with a second thin layer of Mod Podge. Immediately sprinkle with the extra fine white glitter. Let dry completely.

• This step will really make the ornaments beautiful. The Mod Podge fills in some of the porous texture and smooths out the dough, while the glitter makes them shimmer and sparkle.

• If you’re going to be painting your ornaments, you can skip the glitter and paint them at this point. My kids loved rolling out and cutting the salt dough with Christmas cookie cutters, and then painting the dried ornaments. These look so cute hanging on our Christmas tree.

Gold Spray Paint

Here is a set of ornaments that I spray painted gold, and dusted with extra fine gold glitter.

Finish with Twine

• Cut lengths of twine, about 10-12 inches per ornament. You don’t want to use thin “baker’s twine”, but rather a heavier, thicker twine will look nicer. Insert the twine through the holes in the ornaments, and tie the twine, adding decorative beads if you like. You could also use thin ribbon instead of twine.
• Hang the ornaments on your tree.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long do salt dough ornaments take to fully dry?

Depending on how large and thick your ornaments are, they can take from 2-7 days to fully dry and harden.

How long do they last?

Your ornaments should last for 30 years if you seal them and store them carefully.

Do these break easily?

No, the dried ornaments are pretty hardy, and will not easily break with normal handling.

How should I store the ornaments?

When you’re ready to pack your ornaments into storage until the next holiday, you should pack them with some dry uncooked rice, or packets of silica gel or desiccant. These will absorb any lingering moisture in the dough, and prevent them from molding when they’re in storage.

Are salt dough ornaments edible?

No, they are not edible.

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