Salt dough ornaments are a simple, cheap, and fun project for your children this Christmas. If your tree is already full you can use these ornaments as gift tags for your homemade Christmas gifts or decorations in a food gift basket.
If you are wondering what salt dough is, it’s that same familiar recipe you used in elementary school to make maps!
Ingredients
- 1 bar Fels Naptha Soap (~5.5 ounces)
- 1 ½ cups of Borax
- 1 ½ cups of Washing Soda (NOT baking soda)
- 1 stainless steel grater
- Water, hot
- Large empty container (1 gallon)
Instructions
- Use a medium saucepan to heat 2 cups of tap water. Adding a little extra won’t hurt.
- Grate the bar of Fels-Naptha and divide it into 5 equal groups. A digital food scale is very helpful on this step.
- Add 1 portion (~1.1 oz.) of the grated soap into the boiling water on the stove. Stir occasionally until it is completely dissolved. It’ll only take a minute or so.
- Measure 1 1/2 cups each of the Borax and the Washing Soda into a large bowl; stir until well mixed.
- Measure the powdered mixture into 5 equal portions and store each in snack size plastic bags. Add one portion of this powder mixture into the pot of now soapy hot water; stir well for about a minute.
- Let this detergent concentrate cool just enough to not melt your plastic jug. Pour it into a one-gallon container. If you’re worried it’s too hot, add a touch of tepid water.
- Add enough hot water from the tap to reach half-way.
- Make sure your container has a well fitting screw-on lid and shake the jug like your ridding your body of pent up aggression. The solution needs to be 100% mixed. It won’t take more than a couple of minutes.
- Let this jug sit all day, or overnight. It will be extremely thick and look like a blob; that’s good in this case.
- Once the processing time is over, shake the jug for another couple of minutes.
- Fill the remainder of the jug with hot tap water. Shake for another minute and you’re done.
Notes
It doesn’t hurt to give the jug a little shake before each use. It takes about ¼ cup to do a very large load of really dirty laundry; there is no need to add any more water to the mixture. Remember this is high efficiency (HE) detergent so don’t worry that you don’t see suds filling the window of your machine.
Mix together flour and salt. Then mix in the warm water.
Mix until you have a dough that is similar in consistency to pie crust.
Take the dough and place it on a floured surface.
Roll out the dough until it is about 1/4 inch thick.
Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. If you don’t have cookie cutters you could use a glass to cut circles. Make sure you have lots of helpers.
Also make sure someone is watching the baby….
Put the shapes on a cookie sheet. Then take a sharp object (I used a meat thermometer) to put a small hole in each shape where you will insert the ribbon. Make sure the hole goes all the way through the dough, because it will close up slightly while baking.
Bake the salt dough ornaments for 4 to 6 hours at 200 degrees or until hardened.
After the ornaments are finished baking let them cool completely. The ornaments are now ready for painting. We used Crayola washable tempra paints.
You can mix glitter with your paints for a sparkly paint, glue on sequins, or add stickers. Get creative!
After the paint has dried thread ribbon through the hole and either hang the ornaments on the tree or use as gift tags. If you want to write on the ornaments use a sharpie, it works really well.
Love this! I run a daycare and this is an awesome activity for the kids!
I finally had to throw out a salt dough decoration my daughter made when she was in elementary school. She is 38 now. I loved that little ornament… oh, and my daughter as well.
We just had a big ornament making day on sunday with friends. We had a blast making salt dough ornaments. This is such a fun activity.
These are so fun to make!!
Okay, we’re trying this this week! LOVE IT! I actually think my mom still has some of these that I made as a kid, but I had no idea HOW I made them, lol! Thanks so much for posting this great tutorial!
Looooove this craft!!! Will do it this afternoon after school! Thank you!!!!!!!!
what a wonderful idea… I have two grandchildren still here , both age 11. The other 5 live down south. I slightly remember doing this when my two children were young.. lol thanks for the recipe again…
We are having a craft day tomorrow, so I’m making them as well. Then finishing them off with a spray coat of acrylic.. looking forward to all the fun!
Love your site. I have 8 kids and I am always looking for just about everything on your site, good recipes, crafts, etc. THANKS….
YOLANDA IN OHIO …… GO BUCKS!
Glad I found your site. I’m hosting our Mommy group on Monday and I was planning on making handprint ornaments. This is perfect! Happy Holidays!
I have been doing these as a tradition for a couple of years. It is always so much fun. I love your site and your kids are super adorable! Merry Christmas!
Love these. Great Memory from Elementary School days. Does anyone know if the dough can be colored with food coloring before baking?
I’m sure you could add food coloring to the dough. It might lighten during baking.
Toni
Can this be used to do handprints? I’m thinking of doing this with my Pre-K class as a Christmas gift from them to their parents.
Yes, I’m sure that would work.
I tried these with a recipe from another site but the oven temp was higher and my ornaments were all brown on the bake (like the underside of cookies). Yours don’t look brown at all. I am thinking the lower temperature and longer baking time might be the trick. Did you have any issues with this?
I think it was the lower temp/ longer cooking time.
*brown on the bottom or underside* I meant….
I saw on another site someone used lots of red food coloring to make little scarves and elf hats for her little ornaments. Very cute, but she did say it stained her hands, so I think washable paint is a much better idea. We used salt dough to make our Jesse tree ornaments. They will be keepsakes forever, I can already tell! Do I store them with all my other Christmas stuff, or should I keep them in the house at a more even temp in the off-season?
After decorating with marker or paints, do I have to coat them with something? Another site mentioned polyurethine (spelling?) but I’d prefer not to (crunched for a time and it’s my toddlers craft project) if it’s not necessary.
We didn’t coat them with anything.
I wonder if we could use eggyolk paints and then bake?