Personalised Christmas Ornaments

Hello lovelies,

I have really been trying to hold off on Christmas posts, at least until December, but seeing everything and everyone getting into the Christmas spirit I just couldn't hold off any longer. Now I know a lot of you won't even be thinking about Christmas yet but there is no harm in getting ideas now is there! Today I have a little craft project that would be a great activity to do with kids (over the holidays) or you can make them more sophisticated and use them on your christmas tree or even personalise them to gift to friends and family. Salt dough christmas tree ornaments, fun, easy and cheap to make.

For the salt dough you will need:

200g Plain Flour
100g Table Salt
And about 150ml of Cold Water ( you may not use all of the water.)

Simple Salt Dough Recipe

To make the dough it is very simple. All you have to do is combine the salt and the flour and then slowly work in the cold water until it starts to hold together and you can form it into a ball.

Simple Salt Dough Recipe

Next you will want to turn your oven on to the lowest heat setting it has, for me this is 50C.

Take your dough and using a rolling pin roll it out to about half a centimetre thick. Once it is rolled out you can cut out your shapes. I am using paper templates that I made. If your not that great at drawing you could print some templates of your computer or alternatively use some fun shaped cookie cutters.

Finally make a small hole at the top of each shape. This will be where you attach a ribbon or string for hanging.

Salt Dough Decorations

TOP TIP: Use a small amount of water on your finger and run it around the edges of your shapes to smooth them out and give them a polished finish.

Line a baking tray with tin foil and carefully transfer your shapes. Bake on a low heat for 2-3 hours. Baking them slowly will help prevent them from rising. The aim of the game is to slowly draw out all the moisture until they are rock hard.

Baked Salt Dough Decorations.

Once they have baked set them aside to completely cool down.

To decorate I will be using:

PVA Glue
Acrylic Paint
Glitter Glue
Twine

(You can really use whatever you want to decorate with, you can paint them or embellish them however you want to. Anything goes.)

To start with I applied a couple of coats of watered down PVA glue to my shapes, this acts as a sealant so that your paint won't get drawn into your dough. The mixture I used was an even amount of glue to water.

Once that was completely dry I then went and applied a white base coat of paint to front, back and sides of my shapes. I knew that I wasn't going to be decorating the backs of them so I wanted to make sure they still looked neat.

Base Coat on Salt Dough Decorations

After this, its really up to you how you choose to decorate. You could use fabric or paper, paint or sequins. It really depends on whatever look you re going for.

For mine I used acrylic paint in different colours and added some glitter by using some cheap glitter glue.... In hindsight I should have gone with loose glitter and used PVA to get it to stick because the glitter glue was no where near as pigmented as I had hoped.

Customised Christmas Tree Decoration

The last thing you will want to do is thread some string, twine or ribbon through the holes that we made at the top of each decoration and tie the ends so that you have somewhere to hang them from.

And here they are. I made myself, Jacob and Red personalised cartoon versions of ourselves to hang on our tree (when we go to get one) and a couple of more traditional christmas themed decorations to go with them.

I am really excited to hang these on my tree this year. They are so cute and individual I can't get enough of how fun these turned out !

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