Holiday Project: Salt Dough Cookie Ornaments

If you have some bored kids hanging around the house this week, or some hard-to-entertain family in from out of town, this project provides hours of fun . . . not to mention, cute ornaments you can hang on your tree or give as gifts.

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You'll need to make up a batch of Salt Dough for this project. It couldn't be simpler to make. Start by mixing these three ingredients in a large bowl:

2 cups Flour

2 cups Salt

1 cup Water

Begin by stirring this mixture, and when it becomes to firm to stir, then knead it a bit with your hands. The resulting dough should feel moist and smooth, but not stick to your hands. (Knead in a tiny bit more flour if it's sticking to your hands.)

. . . And if you like, take some smaller balls of this dough and color them with food coloring. If the food coloring makes the dough a little too sticky, just knead in a tiny bit more flour.

(Note: if you don't like the food coloring approach, then you can always paint your ornaments after you bake them.)

I recommend that you store the dough in an airtight container, so it won't dry out.

Now, get a cookie sheet, and your favorite holiday cookie cutters. And also, you'll need something to roll out your dough with. You can use your rolling pin, but since we'll be working on our cookie sheet, you might want to use something smaller, like a straight-sided bottle, like I'm using here.

Roll some dough out to a 1/4" thickness. We're going to make our ornament on the cookie sheet, so roll this dough out on the sheet, right where you want the finished cookie to be.

Press a cookie cutter into the dough.

. . . And then, pull away all the dough from around the cutter. You can re-roll this to make new ornaments, over and over. Then, remove the cutter.

Now you can decorate your ornament however you like. The salt dough sticks to itself beautifully, so you can press different colors of dough onto your cut-out.

You can also embellish by embossing details into the dough. Toothpicks are great tools for this . . .

. . . Or, you can use a table knife to incise lines in the dough.

Feel free to use any color of dough for the base of your ornament, and embellish it with any color.

If you roll your dough thinner, like 1/8", then you can stack cut-outs of different colors onto each other. (Your finished ornaments should be no more than 1/4" thick.)

As a last step, make a hole in the top of your ornament, for hanging. You can use a drinking straw for this, as shown here . . . .

. . . Or, a toothpick, as shown here. (Just make sure to twirl that toothpick around a little, so your hole is large enough for a bit of ribbon to pass through.)

Make as many ornaments as you like on the cookie sheet. And preheat your oven to 250 degrees.

Bake your ornaments until they are hard. The baking time will vary, but start with 20 minutes, and then keep checking them every 10 minutes after that. They're done when they feel hard all over, but don't let them get brown.

(Note: I have teflon fingers, so I test my ornaments by poking them. Don't you do this - you could burn yourself. Poke yours with a toothpick instead.)

After your ornaments have cooled, seal them all over with some varnish. I like the spray-on kind best for this salt dough. Water-based, brush-on varnish has a tendency to re-soften the surface of your ornament.

And as I mentioned before, at this stage, you can also paint your ornament, or add some glitter, if you like.

When the varnish is dry, poke a 6" piece of narrow ribbon through the hole in the top of each ornament, and tie the ends in a knot. Now they're tree-ready!