More Salt Dough Ornaments

We had a busy Saturday doing lots of fun things. We started with a small craft that I will share tomorrow. Then Hazel and I went to our church for a gingerbread man decorating fundraiser. Hazel had so much fun decorating them. I let her do two. We came home and had some lunch and of course no nap, and she and Mommy and Daddy really needed one, but when Daddy is home we often do not take one.

Then we made some salt dough ornaments. I used a different recipe this time. I wanted to make them like a play dough at first after seeing the post at The Magic Onions. I loved her idea of decorating them with glitter and just have it colored. I got to thinking if the cream of tartar makes the play dough last longer, does it need to be there. I did some research on line and then remembered I had a book, The Arts and Crafts Busy Book: 365 Art and Craft Activities to Keep Toddlers and Preschoolers Busy by Trish Kuffner, with an appendix full of such recipes. I was going to make a no-bake craft clay with cornstarch and baking soda, however to color it you added the food coloring in the beginning. Since I wanted to make two colors this wouldn't work. So I went with the Salt Clay recipe which is the same recipe you see everywhere. I used the method of mixing the dry ingredients that The Magic Onions suggested--the snow method. Hazel loved it!! Then we added the water and still mixed with our hands. At first Hazel didn't like it sticking to her hands but after I did it some she wanted to try some more. I thought I had added too much water at one point but kept kneading it and it became the perfect consistency. We divided it up into two parts and mixed in red in one and green in the other. 

The first rolling, after I got it pretty flat, we used one of Hazel's textured rollers to give stars on our ornaments. Then we cut them out. Used a straw to punch a hole in it and added some glitter.

The next ones we did not give texture by a rolling pin, but used some rubber stamps after we cut them out.  Overall, I love how they came out. We of course added some more glitter to the stamped ones as well and then we baked them for several hours.