Simple Salt Dough

I feel like the title of this post is a huge oxymoron because honestly there isn't anything simpler than salt dough. Flour + salt + water = salt dough. Easy peasey.

Lately I have been seeing/reading a lot about salt dough ornaments but hadn't ever made them. Well this year I decided I wanted to add some simple salt dough ornaments to our tree. And of course I had to get some sweet salt dough hand prints from Emma Claire. So here we go...what you will need for salt dough ornaments.

Ingredients

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

1/2 cup warm water

straw to poke hole with

Directions

- Preheat oven to 200 degrees

- Mix flour/salt together

- Add in warm water

- Mix together

- Form dough ball 

- Cut out shapes

- Place on foil/parchment paper 

{or roll them out right on the surface, that's what I did}

- Bake for 2+ hours. 

Thinner shapes take less time to "cook". Essentially you are NOT cooking the ornaments but speeding up the process of drying them out so they will harden.

 

In order to mix the dough I first started stirring with a spoon, then when it thickened I began using my hand to mush it all together {I'm so technical, I know!} until it formed a dough ball, then I just pinched off pieces of the dough to roll it out!

I made several "fancy" ornaments by stamping them with rubber stamps I found at Michael's. I brushed these love script ornaments with some silver paint before baking.

 My personal fancy favorites. I rolled out a section of dough and then stamped it with a rectangular chevron stamp and then cut out a star shape. LOVE!

Sweet hand print. Don't be fooled by how cute this is. These were HARD to get. I did manage to get both hands done but each hand had to be re done four or five times! ha!

These are fun too! I stamped a section of dough with my chevron stamp and then just used a glass to cut out a circle. Then painted the stripes with pink glitter paint. I plan on making more of these in red and green!

Okay I feel like they are ALL my favorites. But I really love these crosses. If you know me in real life you might be getting one of these so please ignore and or pretend you never saw them! ;-) But how perfect are these for sweet, simple, Christmas gifts?

I always have people ask me where Emma Claire is when I do stuff like this. Honestly when she is napping I don't have the energy to do anything so I usually rest too. So she was up and running around while I was working. ha! I always try to snap pictures of her as she's playing. She just cracks me up and is such a hoot.

Bowls are the best toys, duh.

She is starting to love her baby doll. 

Giving kisses. Seriously, too sweet. I'm going to let you believe that it stayed sweet. Two seconds later she might have been trying to bite off the baby's nose...

Her most favorite thing to do. Play with the dog bowls. It's like she doesn't have any toys. Bless her heart. The child has more toys than she knows what to do with and she wants to play with the DOG FOOD BOWLS. 

 We had a fun day making ornaments, and I say "we" because EC did help! Now that I've made my first batch I plan on doing another soon and I have big plans! I want to make more chevron ornaments in fun colors, I want to get Emma Claire's little feet prints, and I also want to make more crosses for my tree {these are all going to other homes} 

All in all it's a SUPER easy and fun craft and these would make great presents. It just takes a little time and effort but costs almost nothing! I had EVERYTHING on hand to make these! Score! 

Have you tried this yet? What shapes did you make?