Homemade Salt Dough Ornaments

Long winter nights give me a burst of creative energy.

The other seasons are loaded with long, busy days on a homestead. But winter gives our family long evening hours and a little more time on our hands. Time to be creative, as a family. This time of year, that creativity often entails salt dough ornament creations.

A salt dough ornament recipe is right up my alley.

Not surprisingly, really, I kinda love homemade salt dough ornaments, which probably isn’t too much of a surprise if you’ve been around for a while…

Because if you know me you know these few things for sure:

• I love a rustic farmhouse style (as is evident in our kitchen remodel).
• If I get around to decorating for Christmas, I prefer homemade rustic decorations.
• I’m all about giving my kids hands-on old-fashioned experiences around the homestead.

When I was a kid, I loved making homemade ornaments for our family Christmas tree, and they were my favorite to pull out every year.

Plus, homemade trumps fancy.

I don’t have anything against the polished and pretty look of those fancy ornaments, but I’d rather look at a Christmas tree full of my kids’ handiwork. The kids are proud of their DIY projects hanging from the tree, and that’s pretty darn important to me.

Sometimes these Wyoming winters can get a little rough, and when there are days-on-end where the kids are stuck inside and we’re all getting a bit restless from those blizzard winds, it’s nice to pull out a few simple ingredients in the kitchen and get creative.

Sometimes the creativity involves something delicious, like old-fashioned molasses cookies or making homemade vanilla extract to give as gifts. And then sometimes we get creative and make a few ornaments.

When I mentioned my love of these simple ornaments to Michelle this week, she went on and on about how much she loves them too. Seriously, I think she’s crazier than I am about these simple, handmade pieces of family traditions. She has them all over her home at Christmas time. Since her home happens to be this awesome, seriously old Colonial farmhouse in New England, I asked her to help me out on today’s post. Cause, duh, I wanted her to take some pictures of her farmhouse Christmas decorations for us to see.

{{In case you haven’t met her yet, Michelle Visser is a member of The Prairie Homestead team. Michelle has been featured in Whole Foods Magazine, Capper’s Farmer, and Mother Earth News. And her new, best-selling book, Sweet Maple, (aff link) has started a maple obsession in homes everywhere. But she’s also a mom to a few teen daughters who wanted to decorate their old farmhouse with salt dough ornaments this year.}}

Salt dough ornaments = A perfect family activity.

Seriously, you guys, it only takes three simple ingredients to make salt dough ornaments. It’s the perfect “snow day” activity. The kids have fun making their own creations, and you can join the fun right along with them.

This recipe makes plenty of salt dough, so you can also make some unique ornaments to put on top of Christmas gifts. And of course, you could skip that shiny generic wrapping paper from the store and complete the look with some brown butcher paper and twine (aff links). Or try one of these other alternative wrapping paper ideas that I love.

Today, I’m sharing a basic homemade salt dough ornament recipe. And below that, we’ve added a few unique variations of this recipe–ideas for additions you can add to the dough for a more unique look–and options for hanging your ornaments. Then, finally, Michelle shares some insight into her farmhouse Christmas this year. 

Basic Homemade Salt Dough Ornament Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup salt
• 3/4 – 1 cup water

Equipment:

• Rolling Pin
• Parchment paper (like these parchment paper sheets)
• Cookie Cutter Shapes (I like the basic Christmas shapes from Lehman’s)
• A drinking straw to make the holes (stainless steel straws are handy)
• Twine or ribbon for hanging the ornaments
• Glitter, paint, or whatever you want to use for decorating

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 225 F.
2. Mix the flour and salt in a mixing bowl.
3. Add 3/4 cup of water to the bowl. If the dough seems too dry, you can gradually add up to 1/4 cup more.  (Check out the creative additions section below for some cool ideas of what to add to this basic dough recipe.)
4. Put parchment paper down on your kitchen counter and sprinkle it with flour.
5. Put the dough on the parchment paper and knead it until it’s smooth and pliable.
6. Lightly flour your rolling pin and roll the dough to about 1/4-inch thickness.
7. Cut your dough into shapes.
8. Move the shapes to a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
9. Using a straw, make a hole for the twine or ribbon to go through later.
10. Bake approx. 1-3 hours until they are completely dry. (Thicker ornaments need more baking time than thin ones.)
11. Halfway through baking, flip the ornaments over.
12. Remove and let them cool completely.
13. Once ornaments are completely cooled, decorate them with paints, glitter, or whatever strikes your fancy.

Variations for the Basic Salt Dough Recipe

Michelle explains, “Depending on what I have on hand, I like to add different ingredients to the basic salt dough ornament recipe. My personal favorite is the last one on this list. I used that idea to make garlands to hang in our deep-set, aka they-sound-romantic-but-are-super-drafty, old windows.”

Here’s a few creative add-on options for the basic salt dough recipe:

• Make colored salt dough ornaments: Split your salt dough into different small bowls and add different food dyes to each bowl. You’ll want to add a lot of dye because the color fades a bit when they dry.
• Make scented salt dough ornaments: By adding spices and even essential oils, you can make some very nicely scented ornaments for your Christmas tree. Simply add 2-3 tbsp  of spices to your dough. (Use any combination of ground cloves, ground ginger, ground nutmeg.) In addition to the spices, you can also add 10-15 drops of essential oil to the dough. Orange essential oil is especially nice with any spice you choose.
• Make earth-toned old-fashioned looking salt dough ornaments: Michelle shares a cinnamon salt dough recipe right here. Bonus, the added cinnamon gives these ornaments a delicious scent.

And More Salt Dough Ideas from Michelle’s Farmhouse…

Before baking your ornaments, consider making two holes in some symmetrical shapes, like stars or hearts, so you can make garlands with twine. Add gingham ribbons or dried orange slices for extra special decorations.

Try molding them.

Some of my favorite salt dough ornaments are ones made long ago as keepsakes for my daughters to one day take and use to decorate their own trees, in their own homes. This year my oldest did just that. Yes, by the way, salt dough ornaments last forever. We have ones that are over 2 decades old and still look as good as they did the year they were made.

One thing I love about molding salt dough ornaments is that I then have a design to follow as I add paint to the ornament, kinda like coloring inside the lines. Yes, as much of a rebel as I am, I do like to color inside the lines.

If you want to try your hand at molded salt dough ornaments, here’s a great assortment of cookie molds (aff link).

Tie them up & enjoy!

After your ornaments are baked and cooled, you can use whatever you have on hand to add a hanger to your ornaments.

I use all sorts of materials:

• twine
• fishing wire
• ribbon, or
• small thin pieces of gingham fabric (my favorite)

However you make them, I hope you love the simplistic beauty that salt dough ornaments offer for decades to come and the new family memories you make in the process.

As for our family tonight? After we made some new ornaments today to hang beside our cherished old ones, the girls took our spoiled-yet-perfect-homestead-dog, Bixby, for a walk in the snowy woods, and now we’re diving into a few final decorating details in these old rooms. In the end, I treasure both the old and the new memories that the holidays always bring. The best ones, of course, are the DIY ones we’ve made together.

More Great DIY Gift Ideas:

• Honey Mint Lip Balm Recipe
• Whipped Body Butter Recipe
• How to Make Beeswax Candles
• How to Make Soy Candles
• Homemade Pumpkin Soap Recipe