Easy Homemade Salt Dough Ornaments

These Easy Homemade Salt Dough Ornaments only require 3 ingredients! This is such a cheap (and totally fun!) activity to do at home — with or without kids!

My favorite ornaments on the tree are the ones my kids made. I adore the frames made out of popsicle sticks, the tiny thumbprints turned reindeer, and the handpainted happiness that is definitely best left up to the artists interpretation.

But my little guys are getting older and they don’t spend nearly as much time making crafts for Mommy while they’re at school as they did in years past. I mean, Andrew’s in middle school! Do they even do crafts in middle school? Probably not. That’s probably the opposite of cool.

I can remember making things out of salt dough in Sunday school as a kid. And in the name of having homemade ornaments, even as my boys get big, I decided to resurrect this recipe for Crafty Cookies.

You’ll need salt. Just plain old iodized salt. Save the sea and kosher salts for caramels and cooking. I want you to grab the big ‘ol canister of salty salt that is stuffed in back of the cabinet because you’re trying to cut back and put it to some non-edible good use.

And flour. You need all purpose flour.

Gradually stir in water. Yes, just regular old tap water. Only three ingredients! Salt, flour, water!

The mixture will make a doughy paste.

And when all the ingredients are mixed well, you’ll have a little ball of dough. Scatter flour across your work surface and turn the salt dough out onto it.

Flour your hands and gently knead until the dough is pliable and then roll it out to about 1/4” thick.

Then get out your cookie cutters and get to work!

You’ll need to punch a hole in the top of each ornament before you bake them. We used a wooden skewer.

Spread your “cookies” evenly across an un-greased cookie sheet and bake at 250 for about 2 hours.

Let them cool completely before decorating. We used acrylic paint and lotsa glitter… and a few sequins.

This was crazy fun, and now we have a new batch of homemade ornaments that will be my favorites for years to come.

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Yield: lots of "cookies"!

Salt Dough Ornaments

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 2 minutes

Additional Time: 3 hours 18 minutes

Total Time: 3 hours 30 minutes

Homemade Christmas ornaments using salt dough! An old-fashioned favorite, super fun to make with kids, and only 3 ingredients!

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Ingredients

• 1/2 cup salt
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup water

Instructions

1. Whisk the salt and flour together in a large bowl.
2. Gradually stir in the water. When the dough has just combined, turn it onto a floured surface and gently knead until it's pliable and smooth.
3. Roll it out to about 1/4" thick and cut out shapes with cookie cutters. Punch a hole at the top of the shapes and lay out on an ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake at 250 for 2 hours. Let the "cookies" cool completely and then decorate with paint and glitter.

Yield will depend on the size of your dough cut outs

Notes

1. Eating this dough won't hurt you in small quantities, but it REALLY doesn't taste good, so I don't recommend it. Eating the baked "cookies" will probably break your teeth, so I'm gonna go ahead and say don't do that either.
2. Salt dough ornaments are toxic to dogs. PLEASE KEEP AWAY FROM YOUR PETS.