If you love crafting your own Christmas ornaments, want to involve the kids in decorating, or just need a cheap hack to get some Christmas spirit up in your place, look no further than DIY salt dough ornaments. This year we started a new tradition of making our Christmas ornaments over Thanksgiving break. I love natural handmade looking decorations. It’s even more rewarding to get the kids involved and have them beaming with pride at their handiwork.
Salt Dough
So how do you make salt dough anyway? Well it’s basically the easiest and cheapest way I can think of to make an ornament. All you need is one cup of flour and half a cup of regular table salt.
Mix flour and salt together and then begin to add water a little at a time until you form a workable dough. If your dough gets a bit too wet, you can sprinkle in some more flour.
Knead your dough for a few minutes until you can form a smooth ball. Your dough shouldn’t be chunky.
Roll your dough out to about 1/8 of an inch thick. Use some cookie cutters to cut out the shapes of your dreams. Here are some great Christmas cookie cutter options if you don’t have any.
Bake
Be before you bake your ornaments make sure to poke a hole in the top. I used a wooden skewer to make the holes in my ornaments. Just make sure it’s big enough to accommodate whatever you are going to use to hang the ornaments.
Bake your DIY salt dough ornaments for 20 minutes at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. After 20 minutes, flip the ornaments and bake another 20. If they’re not completely dry, you can flip and bake a little longer, or let them finish drying on the counter.
Embellish
Since I wanted white ornaments, I opted to give these guys a quick once over with white craft paint. The DIY salt dough will be a bit off white or even cream in color. It does, however, take paint very well.
I experimented with a sharpie and paint marker that I had. I found that a sharpie is much easier to use on the painted ornaments. The paint pen works, but needs a couple coats which makes it a bit difficult to achieve “the look.” Grab a metallic sharpie for the best results.
The kids are much more creative than me, and they came up with some interesting ideas of their own.
String Em’ Up
Using some Christmas string, I strung three ornaments together. Here is a cute string option.
Some DIY salt dough ornaments we hung alone for a bit of variety.
But I really like the look of the three ornaments together. Be sure to decorate or write on both sides of the ornaments as they will spin a bit once they’re hung.
Not all of the ornaments were for the tree. We used some fun shapes to make DIY salt dough ornaments to use as garlands. I love how simple and homie these turned out.
So grab your helpers and whip up a batch of some easy handmade salt dough ornaments. Enjoy!
Check out more Christmas DIY’s!
