Salt Dough Ornaments (Day 4 & a Recipe/Tutorial)

Matt's Aunt Kay always makes us the cutest salt-dough ornaments (including the one pictured above) so when I needed to make some for my KDO class and some for the kids to decorate at home--I called her and asked for the recipe.  Then I called her at least 5 times for details/instructions.  Ha! 

 The recipe is 2 1/2 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, 1 cup of water.  You mix it all together and knead it for about 10 minutes.  (If you have a mixer with a paddle she said you could use that until it is all mixed together and then just knead it for a couple minutes.)  Then you just roll the dough (maybe 1/8 inch--I did 1/4 inch and they may be a little too thick?)  The above picture is what one batch made.  I used medium sized cookie cutters to make the shapes. 

 I used a Capri Sun straw to make the hole for the string.

 Then if you are going to bake or microwave then you need to prick all over the ornament with a needle so that they don't get all puffy when they cook.  Also if you want to carve any design into them (or any handprint impressions) you would need to do that before you "cook" them.  I microwaved mine for 3 minutes and then flipped them over and cooked them for 1 more minute.  That did it for most of the ornaments.  There were a few that were still a little soft in the middle so I cooked them for another minute.  (Oh, I also put them in one of my small pyrex baking dishes.)  Also there were a couple of them that turned a little brown on one side but since we were painting them that didn't matter.  If you aren't painting you may want to microwave in smaller time increments.  (The ones we made at KDO we didn't cook at all--we just let them dry out for a few days and then sprayed them with sealer once they were all dry so that is an option, too.)

 Then we were ready to paint!  We used acrylic paint because that is what Matt's Aunt Kay and DeDe recommended.

 The kids were so excited to paint. 

 They had lots of fun and painted several ornaments.  They wanted to paint one of everything! 

 Of course what fun would painting ornaments be if we didn't invite some friends over to join us?  Sam and Addy came over to create some ornament masterpieces, too! 

 These are our painted masterpieces.  I painted Lightning McQueen and was pretty proud of myself until Reid woke up and said, "I wanted it blue!"  (He thought I had painted over the car he had painted blue...I hadn't.)

 After we painted them I sprayed them with a clear gloss protective coat...

and "tada" here they are all finished and ready to go!  This was the first time I have done salt-dough ornaments and I would say they were MUCH easier than I thought they were going to be.  (Like about the same as making cookies but you just have to knead it longer.) I also loved that I could microwave them to speed up the process because the kids were chomping at the bits to get painting.  This was our Day 4 activity and I think it may become a tradition!