for the last couple of years, we have made our own christmas decorations. this year will be very much the same. we start our crafty christmas with salt dough decorations. this is how we did ours.
you will need:
– 1 cup salt
– 2 cups flour
– 1 cup warm water
– a large mixing bow
– a rolling-pin
– cookie cutters, we used christmas trees, stars and hearts
– a cocktail stick or skewer
– optional rubber stamps
– string or thread to hang
mix the salt and the flour together, gradually add the water bit by bit, mixing and kneading with your hands until it all clumps together nicely as your dough.
pull off a good handful and flatten onto a floured board with the palms of your hands, then roll evenly to about 1/2cm in thickness.
place your cutter flat on and firmly onto the dough to cut out your desired shape. repeat until all the space is filled and then remove the excess from around your shapes and squish together ready for the next round.
use your cocktail stick or skewer to make holes at the top to use to hang later. make sure the holes are fairly generous as they tend to shrink a little through the drying process. we had bought some rubber stamps for another project but we choose to use these to stamp the words tree, star and heart onto the trees, stars and hearts! too clever eh?
you can dry these in the oven on a very low heat for around 3 hours, turn half way through and check the holes, maybe give them a poke if they are starting to shrink too much. if you dry in the oven they will puff up slightly and we were keen to keep them as flat as possible so we let them dry naturally. this took 3 days! hmm, bad move. once they were finally dry we got to painting them, use acrylic paints so that they don’t get mushy again.
once painted you may again just need to give the holes a quick poke with your stick of choice.
tie with string or thread and bobs your uncle. we also made some smaller ones and tied these to a long piece of string to make a garland.
so simple and so pretty. go on have a go.
I love the simplicity of the white shapes with the stamped letters. I really want to give these a try
so so easy do it!
I love the idea of stamping letters into the shapes, such a unique way of making them a little more special x
and another way to sneak in a spot of spelling!
Beautiful! I am thinking of a black, white and red theme on our tree this year too so I’m nobbling your idea for our tree! x
i’ll consider myself nobbled! x
Brilliant! Love them x
I need to know where you got the stamps from ….. I will try and be “crafty” this Christmas 🙂
they were from muji http://www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?Sec=16&Sub=68&PID=6198 but i’m sure there’s plenty of others on line x
LOVE salt dough decorations (posted some today too 🙂 love the little addition of words. So pretty!
you can make them really personal too, with names etc. great for name tags too.
It’s been a while since we’ve made those, perhaps we’ll do again this weekend. Thanks for the inspiration!
so easy and simple to do, however perhaps use the baking option!
Is that really all I need – salt, flour and water? They look so effective. I just got some new cutters too that are waiting to be tested, thank you for sharing.
they are not just waiting they are BEGGING!!!!
Absolutely gorgeous – I love how effective they look on the tree. I tried making these a few years ago and they were nowhere near as good as these – I may have to try again this year x x
oh please try again they are so so simple x
I love the simple white with the words, and the garland you strung up with them – fantastic idea! From the parenting pin-it party and pinned it!
i love the white too, ronnie didn’t at first but i’ve talked him round!
oh i love them! i really need to do them with kara! although i am sure she will want to make colour them and add lots of glitter!
thank you for linking up with the #pinitparty
ronnie did too, but i was quite firm on the whiteness! ha ha ha
Oh I love these! Brings back memories of when I was a kid. Must get round to doing salt dough with my little ones.
me too, i think i might have had just as much fun making them as ronnie!