This past weekend, in addition to making the pumpkin bread that I blogged about earlier this week, I also finished making some salt dough ornaments.  I went to a couple of stores, but couldn’t find a snowflake cookie cutter so I used a daisy and star cookie cutter to make these ornaments.

Of course, once I made these ornaments  it seemed like all of the the stores got their winter cookie cutters in stock and I saw snowflake cookie cutters in four different stores. Don’t you hate when that happens? I guess I will just have to make another batch of ornaments!

I think that these ornaments would be pretty hanging on a Christmas tree, as a tag on a gift, or hanging from a fireplace mantle.

First, I made the salt dough.  I mixed together 2 cups of all-purpose flour and 1 cup salt.  I measured one tablespoon of lemon juice into a one cup measuring cup and filled the remainder of the cup with warm water. I added the liquid mixture to the dry mixture and stirred until a smooth dough formed (about 5 minutes with an electric stand mixture).  I turned the dough out onto a flour surface and kneaded the dough until smooth.

On a sheet of parchment paper, I used a rolling pin to roll out a scoop of dough to approximately 1/4 inch thickness.  (I placed the dough that I was not working with in a zip lock bag to keep it from drying out .)  I used a bamboo stick to make a hole in the dough for a string to hang the ornament.  I  used a daisy cookie cutter and a star cookie cutter to cut out the ornament.  To help keep the ornament’s shape, I removed the excess dough without moving the ornament from the parchment paper.

I repeated these steps with the remaining dough.  I then transferred the ornaments and the parchment paper to a baking sheet. I baked the ornaments in the oven for about 4 hours at 175 degrees Fahrenheit.  I flipped the ornaments approximately every 30 minutes. I then let the ornaments sit on the counter for about a week to dry.

The edges of the ornaments were a bit rough so I sanded the edges of the ornament until smooth using a nail file.

I painted the ornaments with acrylic paint.

When the paint was dry, I used a blue pen to draw different designs on the ornaments.

I then sprayed the ornaments with two coats of acrylic paint on each side, letting the ornaments dry between coats.

If I were doing this again, I might use a different pen because the pen I used faded quite a bit once the ornaments were sprayed with acrylic spray. Although I think the slightly faded look is sort of pretty.

I strung the ornaments on sliver embroidery floss.  These ornaments are not edible!

To make the ornaments I used the following:

• Flour
• Salt
• Lemon juice
• Warm water
• Acrylic paint
• Pen
• Acrylic spray (gloss)
• Silver embroidery thread
• Parchment paper
• Cookie cutters (daisy and star)

Enjoy!

This is the second set of ornaments that I have made this year; last week I blogged about my clothespin reindeer ornaments.

I was not paid or perked for this post.

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