Salt Dough Ornaments: Learn from my mistakes!

Let me tell ya, we are really starting to get into the holiday spirit here in the Artsy Family!  Little Crafter and I have been busy little elves all month long.  We've been making and buying gifts in the hopes of being finished by Thanksgiving so that we can just enjoy the holidays, focus on their meanings, and experience all the joy and family time they bring.  Recently, we decided to be bold and adventurous and try our hand at salt dough ornaments!

I'd never worked with salt dough before, but Mom on Timeout had a great tutorial back in July and it looked easy enough.  Naturally, I pinned it {what else would I do with a great idea?!} and saved it as an idea for ornament making with my Little Crafter. 

***I learned something important from our experience: just because something looks easy doesn't mean you can't screw it up!  So, I'm going to show you not just the pretty perfect blog tutorial, but how our process really went.  Take a look, have a laugh, learn from my mistakes, and have fun making some personal ornaments of your own!***

EASY PEASY {if you follow directions} SALT DOUGH ORNAMENTS

You'll need:

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 cup salt

1/2 cup lukewarm water

cookie sheets and parchment paper

cookie cutters

Optional:

acrylic paints

paint brushes

glitter

clear sealer

STEP 1: Add flour and salt to your bowl.  SLOWLY add water, stirring until dough forms.

Mistake 1: Ok, so here's what happened.  When I skimmed Mom On Timeout's directions, I apparently missed the part about adding the water slowly.  I just dumped it all in and we started stirring and stirring...and stirring.  The next step is to knead the dough for 10 minutes.  But what we had was the consistency of cake batter.  How do you knead batter?  So, genius me decides that maybe it means to stir for ten minutes and the dough will eventually form {this is why I normally post crafts, not recipes}.  Eventually, it became obvious that no, that was not the case.

Even LC knew something wasn't right.  This makes me laugh...it's like he's saying, "Seriously, Mom?  This isn't dough."  Soooo, I went back to the original post and realized my mistake.  We dumped out the first batch and started from scratch, with Little Crafter telling me, "Do it right this time, ok, Mommy?  Make it doughy.  Put the water in slow." {yes, he really said that}

STEP 2: Knead dough for 10 minutes.

My helper, despite what you see here, did not enjoy this part because "It makes my hands too meffy."

He absolutely hates having anything on his hands...just like Daddy.

STEP 3: Let dough sit for 40 minutes.

STEP 4: Roll out dough to about 1/4" thickness and cut out shapes.  Place on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.  Poke holes in the tops of each shape if you are making ornaments.

Mistake 2: At this point, we hadn't gotten out the rolling pin or cookie cutters yet.  Hey, we had time, right?  So the timer beeps to tell us 40 minutes have passed, and I realize that I can only find two cookie cutters; a train and a gingerbread man.  Which is apparently unacceptable to a little boy who wants stars and snowflakes and mittens too.  We have more somewhere, I know this.  But they're nowhere to be found.  I call hubby, who says that his best guess is that they're packed away in one of the Christmas boxes.  Which are in a closet under the steps, allll the way in the back.  Behind and under things I couldn't move if I wanted to.  Poop.  I decide we should run to Walmart and grab a few more.  Meanwhile, Little Crafter is terrified with a capital T of Walmart because they sell those awful Baby Alive dolls which make him scream incessantly.  Last year he walked past one and the motion sensor made it start talking and crying...he's been traumatized ever since.  So now that they're out again for Christmas, he won't go in Walmart.  Sigh.  We go to the grocery store where six cookie cutters cost us more than $8.  Mama fail.

 STEP 5: Bake at 250 for 4-6 hours.

This is to get all the moisture out of them.  I flipped them twice, after about an hour or so each time.  Ours seemed really hard and dry after the 4 hour point, and my grandmother {who was visiting at the time} declared them done, so out of the oven they came!

STEP 6: Decorate!

This was the part a certain someone looked forward to all day long!  It's really an extended project; we started it at 8:30ish in the morning and didn't finish until 9:00 PM...and even then only half of them were painted!  Little Crafter adamantly wanted to finish them all in one sitting, but we managed to convince him that it was twice as fun if he got to do it again the next day.

I was excited that he told me I could paint three of them: a snowflake, a mitten, and a gingerbread man.

Here's my gingy:

STEP 7: Seal with clear acrylic spray.  Add ribbon or cord for hangers when dry.

Have you ever made salt dough ornaments?  Or are you going to give it a try this year?  Our first batch yielded 26 ornaments for us, and since we already had the ingredients on hand {well, except for the cookie cutters} you can't beat the price!  I think these will look adorable tied onto gift packages this year!  By the way, I'll give you three guesses what Little Crafter's favorite color is...

And believe it or not, he convinced me that we needed to make another batch less than a week later.  This time, I tried another technique too, using some clean rubber stamps to stamp some messages into the dough before baking.  I found that the alphabet stamps worked best and the ones with small cursive fonts were tougher to read.  I really like the effect though!  Here are some painted by Little Crafter {with a little mama-assistance on the detail work}.  He's really getting good at doing the base coat though, and he loves choosing which ornament and color he wants next.

Here are a few of the stamped ones that I painted:

Guess which one a certain helper claimed right away?

{and yes, that's rosemary, not pine.  work with me...use your imagination :)}

I'm thinking I may keep one of the ones LC made aside to give away during my birthday celebration, what do you think?

Want some more fun seasonal ideas?  Make sure to stop by the ongoing {Our} Home for the Holidays link party and this week's Shine On Fridays party for other great projects!