DIY Salt Dough Ornaments

Every year during the holiday season I like to make some sort of homemade ornaments with my kids. It’s become a bit of a tradition, and I love when this time of year rolls around and I get to dig out the boxes of Christmas decor and find their festive little creations.

For each of their first Christmas’ we have made salt dough handprints. They’re super simple to make, and it’s a really fun way to look back at how tiny their little hands once were. It gives me all the feels when we match up their now much bigger hands to those tiny ornaments!

I recently shared our DIY salt dough ornament project on my Instagram stories, and a whole bunch of you asked me how we made them! I can’t take credit for the originality of this recipe, seeing as it’s all over Pinterest, but I thought I’d share the details of what has worked for us over the last few years!

For the dough:

1 cup of kosher salt

1 cup of all purpose flour

1/2 cup of water

1. Mix ingredients together in a large bowl, and once combined, use your hands to knead the dough and really work it together.

2. Once you are able to form a ball, roll your dough out using a rolling pin until it’s about 1/4 inch thick (I usually go slightly thicker).

3. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes.

4. To make handprint ornaments, I roll out a circle shape slightly bigger than the handprint will be, and then press your child’s hand into the dough (this is the hardest part, you’ll want to push firmly so the print really indents).

5. Using a toothpick or a straw create a hole in each ornament for hanging.

6. Allow your ornaments to dry… you can do this 2 ways. Either allow them to air dry on a baking sheet for about 2 days, or pop them in the oven at 200 degrees until they dry out.

I like to use festive ribbon to string mine, and I use craft paint to decorate them. 

This year, I let M&E cut out a bunch of festive shapes, and then we used markers and washable paint to decorate them. They had a blast!

Don’t forget to write your child’s name and the year on the back!