Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments

In all the years that I’ve had children, we’ve never done salt dough ornaments at Christmas!  Well, last week I decided to give it a try.  The boys really enjoyed making the ornaments, and we’re very pleased with how they turned out.

For the salt dough, we used 2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, 3/4 cup of water, and 1 Tablespoon of oil.  Most of the recipes out there don’t call for oil, but I ended up taking two recipes (one with no oil and one with 2 T of oil) and combining them – ha!  The dough worked out well, I thought.

We baked our ornaments at 200 degrees for about 3 hours.  Then they sat out another day to dry before we painted them.

I found this post on Pinterest from a Kitschy Kitchen and I loved how she used pine needles to make impressions in the salt dough, so we tried it.  We cut out stars, trees, and gingerbread men with cookie cutters.  Gresham also made a dinosaur with his dinosaur sandwich cutter!  The boys had trouble getting their salt dough creations off the counter and onto the cookie sheet without ruining them, so I had to do that part.

We painted the ornaments with acrylic paints.  I bought some that said “Extreme Glitter” for the star ornaments.  I actually hate glitter, and I don’t think I’ve ever purchased glitter, but for some reason the glitter paint seemed festive for the stars!

The glitter paint really made this project!  It went on white, but dried clear and glittery.  And, once it’s dry, the glitter does not come off on your hands!  Major plus!

After seeing how great the glitter paint looked when it dried, I decided to try it on top of a Christmas tree ornament which I had already painted.

Here it is before:

And after – the glitter paint made it look SO much better!

Gresham’s dinosaur ornament turned out so cute!

Aidan made a gingerbread man and a red star.  I hope I can talk him into painting a few more, because these will make great gifts!

If you need more ideas for homemade Christmas crafts, check out our Christmas candle jars and felt star ornaments.

Or, follow my Christmas Pinterest board!