We'll guarantee you have the ingredients to make salt dough ornaments in your kitchen: flour, salt, water. Nope, they won't taste or smell lovely (like these iced gingerbread ornaments), but they keep well from year to year, and you can decorate them with pens, stamps, glitter—all that stuff you wouldn't put in your mouth but looks pretty on the tree. Here are five beautiful ideas.
There's everything from simple, unadorned shapes to circles decorated with elaborate ink stamps. The possibilities are endless! Salt dough ornaments are hard and durable enough to decorate any number of ways.
Any one of the links below will take you to a basic recipe.
• 1. Natural Salt Dough Ornaments, from Fly Through Our Window.
• 2. Stamped Circles, from Tortoise and the Hare.
• 3. Swirly Red Snowflakes, from Katy Elliott.
• 4. Ink-Stamped Ornaments, from Even Cleveland.
• 5. Iced Star, from Country Living. (Click through to slide 13. This is technically a sugar cookie, but we thought it included a good tip: If you want to buy pre-made dough, knead in extra flour to make it sturdy enough for ornaments.)
Do you make salt dough ornaments for your tree?
Related: Red, White, and Adorable: Two Candy Cane Cookies
(Images: Darby/Fly Through Our Window; Tortoise and the Hare; Katy Elliott; Stephanie/Even Cleveland; Keith Scott Morton/Country Living)
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Never made them outside of kindergarten (salt dough is always a popular "gift" to make for mom and dad in every school I've seen) but I do remember as a girl finding a big baggie of salt dough "cookies" my mom and dad made and iced with some kind of egg wash with food coloring. We never put them on the tree (they were pretty ugly!) but they do last forever! ha
I never knew these were a thing people did, but growing up we had a couple of very nice store-bought ones. I never really knew what they were, they definitely SEEMED like a cookie but I thought it might be some kind of plastic, so I decided to test the theory by taking a tiny bite. I still remember how shocked/offended I was that people would make something that was so like a cookie but was just salty and horrible. I'm not sure I could ever make these without it feeling like a betrayal.
I made some when my eldest son was 1. I put his handprint on them as presents for the grandparents. As expected, the grandparents went absolutely gaga over them!
I make salt dough ornaments with my boys each year; they love making them and giving them to family members for the holidays.
i've been looking for some nice DIY ornament ideas all day :) I love the stamped ones!
I recall a Martha Stewart Christmas spread that featured over sized dough ornaments on the tree.I thought they were great at the time.Very traditional decoration for the tree.
My dog would looooove these. Unfortunately.
i got a little cookie press last year in an after christmas sale but haven't used it yet - this gives me the idea to try it out on some ornaments so i can can get the hang of it and hopefully make some pretty things! :)
LOL! brittanykate.
I never thought of that and I have dogs.Thanks for the reminder!
I still love these types of ornaments.if you look around online some people are making wreaths and boughs with them.You can really cut loose with this idea.
I turned 26 today... my mom has decorations from my childhood that look just like this on the tree. They do in fact last forever!