Ingredients for Salt Dough Ornaments You’ll only need flour, salt and water to make your ornaments. We do recommend sealing them when they are finished painting. You can seal with either a mod podge or a clear glaze spray.

Oh yes, dear reader, you absolutely can. You’ll see photos from the first batch when we get down to the egg wash bit, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Knead the dough, freeze it, then bake it for several hours and, once cooled, they’ll be ready for decorating with cookie cutters, microbeads, craft paint, and glitter for extra sparkle. You can paint a coat of glossy decoupage glue over the entire ornament to seal and protect it, and to give it a shiny finish.

Acrylic paints are a good choice for salt dough, but not all paints work well. If you notice a cracked surface after it dries, do not use that paint again. You will want an assortment of paintbrushes, including small sizes with thin tips.

Why is the Salt Dough Bubbling in the Microwave! This is because you are heating the dough too quickly – make sure that you follow the instructions on the microwave recipe exactly to avoid bubbling or burning.

There are two reasons why it will puff up. If the oven is at a too hot a temperature – you need to make sure it is as low as possible. It may also puff up if you have used self-raising flour instead of plain or all-purpose flour.

Oven dry the salt dough pieces. Instead of air drying the uncoloured salt dough pieces, you can bake them in a conventional oven at 93°C (200°F). The drying time depends on the thickness and size of the pieces. It can be as short as 30 minutes for small and flat pieces to several hours for bigger, thicker ones.

Instructions

1. Combine flour, salt and 1 cup of water. Divide into 4 dough balls and set 3 aside.
2. To evenly distribute color, add food coloring to ¼ c water combine with dough ball. Knead with hands, if needed.
3. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
4. Roll dough, cut and use a straw to make a hole.

Once you have created with the salt dough and baked it, you can paint it!

Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Form dough into desired shapes and arrange on a baking sheet. Bake in the preheated oven until dry and hard, about 2 hours. Allow to cool completely.

Once you’ve formed your salt dough, you can cook the creations in the oven to make them set. Once baked, they will harden and can be painted and decorated after they cooled down! If you don’t have an oven (like in a nursery), you can also just wait until the salt dough dries out over time.