We’ve only made salt dough ornaments a few times and every time the dough raised or bubbled. I tried to do hand and foot prints but the dough puffs up, you can’t see the print anymore. It’s ruined a lot of our ornaments. So this year I was determined to figure out how to NOT make our ornaments puffy and I finally did it!
You will need:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup salt
1/2 cup water
Acrylic Paint
Ribbon
Cookie Cutters
Hot Oven
Straw
Measure 2 cups of all-purpose flour and 1 cup of salt into a bowl. Add a 1/2 cup of water and mix. Keep adding a small amount of water until the mixture blends together creating a smooth -not sticky- ball of dough.
The idea is to add as little water as possible but still have it moist enough to hold together and roll out. I started mixing with a spoon but Miss 4 got right in with her hands to squeeze and smoosh it.
I gave Little Bro a small ball of dough to roll out and play with. He wanted to taste it and I let him. HUGE MISTAKE! I thought it would just be a learning lesson that sometimes things don’t taste good but he immediately started gagging. Poor guy. Needless to say, I won’t do that again!
Roll the dough to about 1/4″ thick and use cookie cutters to cut out the ornaments. Use a straw to make holes where you want them to hang from.
Little Bro got to make a few of his own. I really prefer plastic cookie cutters or the ones with a grip like these. They are stronger and don’t bend like the thin metal ones. Our first Christmas tree ended up a bit wonky from a bent cookie cutter and I totally gave up on the strange shape our stocking cutter turned into.
Put them on a cookie sheet with parchment paper and stick them in the oven. Make sure your oven is set to 150°f. This is SUPER IMPORTANT. I have seen others use hotter temperatures but I haven’t been able to do so without getting puffiness.
So, plain all-purpose flour, 150ºf oven and 1/4 inch thickness = no puffy ornaments.
Be ready to have your oven available for a few hours. Ours took about 3 hours to dry.
Then paint your ornaments! We used acrylic paint. I had been saving these old playdough containers and they worked really well to hold the paint for Miss 4 to do her thing.
String them with ribbon and hang your decorations! I tried yarn but much preferred the ribbon. The yarn unraveled and frayed.
I was really happy with how these turned out. I’m glad to have finally figured out the perfect Salt Dough Recipe!
