| Christmas crafting by Caroline Leroux | Let’s get ready! Short video and all needed information make the best snow flakes ever!
Preparation:
First the salt dough recipe:
- Two cups of white flour
- One cup of fine kitchen salt
- ~3/4 cup of warm water (cups or parts or glasses…all the same)
Mix flour and salt together. Add water. Knead the dough about 5 minutes or until smooth and combined. If the dough is brittle, add a little bit of water. If it is sticky, add a little bit of flour.
Roll out the dough to ~ 0.5 cm thickness on a floured surface. Use your cookie cutter* to cut out the dough and place the shaped dough on a flat metal tray previously covered with a cookie sheet. Don’t forget to make holes (I use a wooden skewer) on your ornaments if you wish to hang them.
Leave the ornaments to dry half a day. This will reduce the cooking time and avoid bubble formation and swelling of the dough during cooking.
Preheat oven to 85°celcius. Place the ornament dough in the oven and flip them over about every 30 minutes or as soon as they are hard enough to be flipped.
Where they are hard, they are ready! This can take up to 2 hours, sometimes a bit more depending on the thickness and humidity of the dough.
Cool them down and get ready to be creative!
Crafting:
The best place for different and sophisticated cookie cutters is: Breitenbach (Zürichstrasse 5, Löwencenter, 6004 Luzern)
You can be creative and use different materials to decorate the cooked salt dough ornaments:
- Acrylic painting
- Different sizes of paintbrushes including one tiny brush tip for delicate details
- Sponge – make up sponges are fine or any delicate sponges
- Stickers used as stencils – cover the sticky part with painting first as it might remove layers of painting on your ornament when you’ll try to remove it after using it as a stencil
- White liquid glue and glitters
- Permanent markers can be used as well
Extra notes:
–Fresh salt dough can be prepared in advance and stored in a sealed plastic wrap in the fridge up to 5 days. When cold, warm up the dough with your hands before using it.
-Cookie sheets can be reused many time, simply add a note on a corner “salt dough”!
-Experiencing problem with the first coat of painting (the painting is not adhering to the surface properly)? That can be caused by extra flour on the surface of the ornament. In that case, you can add a bit of water to your painting for the first layer and leave it to dry. Problem should be solved!
-Put the kids to work with you!
-Your pretty ornament can be hanged on your tree off course!!! But also on a wine bottle that you offer to a friend, attached to a gift bag handle, or beautifully placed in a box and offered as a Christmas set ornaments gift!
-Enjoy, experiment and don’t be too hard on yourself! Your ornaments will be just perfect!
All the little snow flakes were made by artist Caroline Leroux
