Salt Dough Tree Ornaments

WHAT YOU'LL NEED

• Plain flour
• Fine salt
• Large bowl
• Rolling pin
• Cookie cutters
• Grease proof paper
• Acrylic paints
• Twine
• Beads
• Ribbons

YOUTUBE TUTORIAL

If you would like to watch the video tutorial I made of this project then you can do so by clicking the video link above.

If you like the video then please remember to give it a 'thumbs up' and consider subscribing to my channel for more crafty content.

STEP ONE - MAKING THE DOUGH

The recipe for this dough is very simple, it's just 2 parts flour, 1 part salt and 1 part water.

In a large mixing bowl add 2 cups of plain flour. I sieve my flour but I don't think it's necessary if you don't want to.

Then add in 1 cup of fine salt.

Mix the 2 ingredients together before adding in the water. I use a whisk to do this.

Once the flour and salt are fully mixed together, gradually start adding in a cup of water.

Use the whisk to mix the water in until the mixture becomes thicker. Then use your hands to combine the ingredients.

Keep adding water until the full cup is in there and work the dough until it comes together in a neat ball. Make sure to get all the dry ingredients that are trying to hide at the bottom of the bowl.

Knead the dough for a minute or 2 until smooth and doughy (I'm not a baker 😂).

STEP TWO - SHAPING THE DOUGH

Sprinkle some flour onto the work surface and rub some more onto a rolling pin so that the dough doesn't stick.

Roll out the dough until it's roughly 5mm thick.

To create texture in the dough, I roll over lace and leaves. I wanted some of my decs to have an abstract winter woodland theme and thought the veins of the leaves would work nicely as trees and the lace might resemble bark.

Now lightly press the shaped cutters into the dough to plan out the area. You can, at this stage, fully cut out the dough shapes but I choose not to push all the way through the dough because I have more decorating to do and I think my dough may warp between now and then.

I use little rubber stamps to punch Christmassy words into my dough and use the lightly outlined shapes as a guide.

The pressure needed to punch these little letters into the dough can slightly warp it so that's why I didn't fully cut the shapes out before.

Once you've finished imprinting patterns on your dough, use a straw or a skewer to cut out little holes at the top of each shape to thread twine through later.

Now fully cut out your shapes if you didn't do this earlier and adjust any that have smooshed out of shape.

Carefully peel the dough pieces off of the work surface and place them onto baking trays that have been lined with grease proof paper.

STEP THREE - BAKING

I try to fit most of my shapes onto one tray because my oven isn't big enough for both trays to go on the middle shelf.

Place your trays on the middle shelf and bake for 2 hours at 250F.

If you're like me and had to split them up, place the overflow onto the top shelf and bake those for 1.5 hours.

Once the time is up, check the dough pieces are fully baked by tapping on the top of them. If they're still a little soft then just put them back in for a little longer and closely monitor them.

You can also air-dry your dough if you'd prefer. I made some extra shapes from the scraps of my first batch, just to see how they'd turn out.

I really liked how they looked actually, no cracks or uneven texture, and I'll definitely consider this method in the future. They take about a day either size to dry out though so that's the only downside.

STEP FOUR - DECORATING

This is where my YouTube video will really be worth watching to see exactly how I painted these decs.

I've tried to show a few examples below but for the full details make sure you check out my channel, it's just much easier to show in motion.

I'll do my best to describe the ones I've featured below.

The shapes with stamped letters look best when you have contrasting colours to show up the indents.

With this one, I first paint the whole front in white and then lightly brush over this with an earthy grey.

By lightly brushing the contrasting colour over the top of the first colour you should be able to leave the indented letters undisturbed giving you a clear view of the stamped word.

This next one uses the same process as before but obviously I'm not highlighting letters this time, I'm highlighting the textures in the dough made by the leaves etc.

I first paint on the dark grey, followed by lightly brushing on a sky blue. I then very lightly brush some white over this.

My colour scheme was mainly grey, white, blue and coral.

I love how this one looks like a wintery sky through trees.

Consider the twine an extension to the decorating process by adding cute beads and bows and anything that takes your fancy.

I make a little snowman from 3 different sized beads for this one.

I loop the snowman twine onto the main hanging twine before closing it off.

Here are a few up-close pics of some of my other decs. I love them all so much and can't wait until our tree goes up to display them!

Thanks so much for checking out my post today, I hope this has given you some fun ideas to do yourself.

Any questions at all, drop them below and I'll happily get back to you.

I also have an Etsy store where I sell lots of other handmade bits and bobs so please feel free to check that out by clicking this link.

Until next time, happy crafting! x