This is some you need to start making now. Your kids might like to join in making these
ornaments. I always like to pick up
ornaments that were handmade at the Christmas craft show in our area when I was
able to go to them. One year I got some
great Texas Santa which I sent out as gifts.
Near the end there are two recipes will make your room smell wonderful!! The last one is a gluten free ornament.
Ornament
Dough
Materials: 4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2
cups water and 1 cup salt
Directions:
Preheat oven to 300 degrees F (150 degrees C).
Combine the flour, salt and water; mix well and knead for 10
minutes. Roll out on a lightly floured surface.
Cut into desired shapes and make holes for hanging. Bake for
30 minutes; cool.
Decorate with poster paints or tube paints. Allow to dry and
spray with clear polyurethane on both sides to preserve. Use ribbon or yarn
pieces to hang.
Oven
Flour Clay Recipe (salt Dough)
Materials: 2 Cups Flour, 1 Cup Salt, 2 Tbsp. Vegetable Oil, and 3/4 - 1 Cup Water
Directions:
Mix together flour and salt. Add the oil and then slowly add
the water and stir until you get a nice clay consistency. Once completely
mixed, make into the desired shapes. Bake in a 250 degree oven for
approximately 1 hour. This will vary depending on how thick you creations are.
One hint, do not make shapes too thick or they will crack with baking.
The star shown here was made using this recipe. Before it was
put in the oven, I made a hole for the ribbon using the end of a straw. Once
the star was out of the oven and cooled, I painted it with yellow paint and
then glue. The glitter was then sprinkled on generously! Once the ribbon was in
place this made a fun necklace!
From Ian: Here is a similar recipe using 4 Cups of Flour, 1
cup of Salt, and 1 1/2 Cups of Water. Your creations can be baked at 300
degrees for about an hour. For a golden appearance, paint your creations with
egg yolk before you put it in the oven.
Decorating!!
You can use anything you want to decorate your ornament - like
glitter, paint, and beads. They can be painted or simply use felt tip markers.
When finished, spray completely front and back with clear varnish or
polyurethane spray.
2nd option: Painting
Set up your painting and glitter area outside. Even if it’s
freezing, it’ll be worth it.
Use acrylic paints. Don’t mess around with tempera. Acrylic is
archival and the ornaments will look beautiful when you take them out
year-after-year. FYI: Acrylic paint will not wash out of clothing.
Add some shine. Use glitter or metallic paint. Make it sparkle.
It’s the holidays, after all!
Limit the palette. You can limit ours palette to red, white,
and green for the kids. If you make Chanukah ornaments, you could use blue,
white, and silver. With young children, fewer paint choices make things
simpler.
Gather your materials ahead of time.
Use a paper plate for a palette and cover the workspace in
paper. When you’re done, all you should have to clean are the brushes and
hands.
Non-Edible
Cinnamon Dough
Materials: 3/4 cup applesauce and 4 ounces ground cinnamon
Directions:
Mix the applesauce and cinnamon to form stiff dough. Roll
dough to 1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters and make a hole for ribbon.
Carefully place cookies on a rack to dry. Let air dry for several days, turning
occasionally.
Pumpkin
Spice Salt Dough for Ornaments
Materials:
2
cups flour, 1 cup salt, 1 cup water, and 2 tbsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice
Directions:
Stir all really well. Knead
this like bread dough. You want it to be
dry, but not cracking. If it is sticking
to your hands at all, add more flour. If
it is crumbling all over the place, add more water. If you want to roll them out you will need to
lightly flour your work space between rolling out each ball of dough. Baked them on parchment paper on a cookie
sheet in a 200 degree oven for an hour, then flipped and cooked an additional
hour. Your ornaments should be really
hard with no give. Child may make thicker
ornaments; so, you may need to bake for longer than 2 hours. If you have thinner ornaments, they may be
done slightly sooner.
Gluten
free salt dough ornaments
Materials: 1 ¼ cups of water, 1 cup of salt, 2 tbsp. oil
and 1 cup cornstarch
Directions:
Bring 1 cup to a boil and add 1 cup salt. Stir and dissolve for about a minute (not all
of the salt dissolves.), Pour salt and water over 1 cup of cornstarch and mix
together add 1/4 cup of cold water add 2 tbsp. oil.
Mix and kneed the clay like dough. If the dough is too wet and
sticky, add more corn starch till it has a play dough consistency. Roll the
dough until it was about 1/4″ thick.
Cut some circles (large and small,) stars and a few trees
(with fingerprints in them to be decorated later.) Use a straw to make holes in
each one for stringing.
Baked the ornaments on parchment-lined cookie sheets at 200
degrees F. then increased the temperature to 220 degrees. a half hour later, put
it on 245 F. all in all, these took about 3 hours to bake, and some of the
thicker ones are still a bit soft in the centers.
Note: They’re rolled out pretty thin, then start out
by baking at 245 degrees F.
Decorate:
Use palette of acrylics paint for this project or acrylic
metallic paints and some stamps.
Homemade
Cornstarch Ornaments
Materials: 1.5 Cups Water, 2 Cups Baking Soda, 1 Cup
Cornstarch, Parchment Paper
Directions:
In a large pot combine all ingredients. Stir over Medium to
Medium Low heat. I initially kept my stove on Medium Low and after 20 minutes
the consistency had not changed. So I cranked up the heat to about a 4.5 on my
stove and started to see a change in consistency. You do want to constantly
stir, play with the right heat setting, and it shouldn’t take yours as long as
it took mine. I would say, maybe over 10 minutes stirring.
When the mixture starts to look like the consistency of mashed
potatoes, remove from heat & let cool down.
Once the dough is cool enough to touch, remove from the pot
and place onto your counter. It helps to spread a bit of cornstarch on your
counter to prevent sticking. This is the best feeling dough, and really doesn’t
“stick” on anything. It wipes away very easily.
Form the dough into a nice ball, cover with a damp cloth, and
allow the dough to cool to about room temperature.
Place the dough ball
onto your parchment paper (it is not like pizza dough and will not move
easily onto your cookie sheet). You will be able to easily move the paper with
the dough on it to your cookie sheet once the ornament shapes are cut out. I
promise.
Begin to roll out your dough. It should be about 1/4 of an
inch thick. My dough was thicker in some places, and I should have taken the
time to make sure it was 1/4 in all the way through. This can cause the
ornaments to not want to dry all the way.
Preheat oven to 175 degrees (this will take no time). While
your oven is pre-heating, begin to use your cookie cutters (or hands) to make
the ornament shapes. Cookie cutters have a “lip” on them. Make sure you are not
pushing the wrong side into the dough.
After you have stamped the ornaments, remove the surrounding
dough. I placed my leftover dough in a zip lock bag wrapped in a damp paper towel.
You can store it in the door of my fridge for later use.
Poke holes in the ornament shapes where you want the holes to go.
This is where your string will be. You can use a bamboo skewer on hand, or a
straw or any other item.
The original directions say to bake at 175 degrees for one
hour, flipping halfway through. The oven is cool enough that you can actually
flip the ornaments by hand. They will still feel very soft to the touch, so you
can tell when they are about ready to come out.
If they aren’t 100% dry, they will continue to dry when out of
the oven.
Once they are ready, paint them, Hang them on the tree with a
piece of ribbon, twine, or whatever you have lying around the house. Make sure
you write the date with sharpie.
NOTE FOR
STORAGE: You really want to store these in a cool dry
place. AVOID putting them in a Ziploc bag. The Ziploc bag or container will
cause condensation, drawing the moisture out of the ornaments. You don’t want
them to crumble or become soggy. I would store them in an inconspicuous place,
covered by a towel. I would not keep them in the attic either, so try to find a
good place where they can hang out all year!
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