Christmas Salt Dough Decorations

Hello my loves!

I wanted to share a little tutorial with you on how we made some Salt Dough Christmas Decorations!  these make lovely little keepsakes of your childrens hands and foot prints and they are always lovely to give as gifts too!

I orignally saw these on pinterest last year when I was looking for some inspiration to make Christmas cards for Louis's first Christmas, and I was determined this year I would make some time to have a go!  Next year I'm hoping Louis will be able to have a go at decoarting some himself; he was a little too young this year, but we had great fun actually creating the little prints in the dough!

So, here goes.......

You'll need the following ingredients/items :

1 Cup of Plain Flour

1 Cup of Table Salt

1/2 Cup of Water

  a Baking Tray and Greaseproof Paper

an Oven

a Selection of Paints

Some Ribbon or String to them with

Measuring Cups

The above was enough to make everything in the picture, I did them quite thick, so you may manage to get more out of the dough if you make them thinner.

Preheat your oven to 110c {my oven is fan assisted, so if yours isn't then I'd try 120c}

Mix all the ingredients together till you get a firm dough, the dough should look bit like a ball of pastry. Then split your dough into smaller balls for each piece you want to make.

Lightly flour your surface, so that the dough doesn't stick when you roll it out.

Roll out the dough to the size you want, make sure its bigger than the childs hand or foot print, though.

Then the fun bit, go and make the hand/foot prints.  Louis was really good and let me gently push his hand into the dough, as he wouldn't have been able to do it by himself, but if your child is older and understands then just let them get on with it!

 

As you can see, Louis really wanted to stick his fingers in the dough, so we decided to make a little finger print decoration too lol....he also decided to try and eat some, which he promptly spat out and pulled a face at....safe to say I don't think he will be doing that again lol...

Right so,  place all your decorations on a baking sheet on some greaseproof paper, if you want them to hang up then now is the time to make a little hole in them where you want  the ribbon to go.  I only made one hanging one whish was the little one at the bottom....and I forgot till they had been cooked lol, so I got hubby to drill a little hole in it afterwards.

Now I baked these for 1 hour 30 mins, but I did keep checking them throughout to make sure they didn't burn and that they were cooked all the way through....if they do start to darken in colour beofre they are cooked, then just place a piece of greaseproof paper over the top until they are cooked through. They did crack a little here and there, but that all adds to their charm, in my opinion lol

So now its time to decorate them....I've used some acrylic paints that I already had, these can be bought from any art type shops or Hobbycraft. You can use kids paints too, but I would try and get the liquid paints in a bottle rather than the paints you get in a palette as they are more pigmented and thicker, so you get a better finish.

 

You can also vanish them too, so they are more hard wearing.

 Hope you find the tutorial easy to follow, any questions just shout!

 I loved making these with Louis, it was so much fun and I can't wait to do it again next year!

Much Love

Tab and Louis xx