Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments

My girls love salt dough ornaments - mostly because it involves cookie cutters and paint!  I love them because you only need three ingredients to make these - flour, salt and water - all of which I always have on hand.

We made salt dough handprint ornaments last Christmas...

And we made Easter Tree ornaments this past Easter...

This year we decided to make ornaments to go with our standard St. Louis Bread Company (aka; Panera Bread) gift cards that we give the girls' teachers for Christmas.  Ava also wanted to give some to the girls in her girl scout troop so we bought some mini candy canes, Christmas pencils and Christmas erasers to go with the ornament and a little wallet pic of her school photo.

Salt Dough Ingredients:

1 cup of flour 

1/4 cup of salt

7 Tbsp water

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 300°F. 
2. Mix together flour, salt, and water. Knead with your hands until combined (~5 minutes).
3. On a sheet of parchment paper, roll out the dough to ~1/4-inch thick and press cookie cutters into dough.  If the dough is too sticky when you're rolling it out, spread some flour on your rolling pin.

4. Tear off the dough around the cookie cutter before removing cookie cutter.

5. Use a straw to poke a hole in each ornament (this is where the ribbon will go later). 

6. Place on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and bake for 40-45 minutes, until golden.

7. Wait for ornaments to cool, then paint as desired. Acrylic or Outdoor paint works best. We used the Craft Smart acrylic paint from Michaels and it worked great.  It's also more affordable if you want to buy several colors.

8. When dry, thread a ribbon through each straw hole to create ornament hangers. All of the Christmas ribbon is on sale at the craft stores!

Merry Christmas!!