Dec 8th: Salt Dough

Have you ever heard of salt dough? It's a sort of play dough that is often used for crafting candle holders and Christmas pendants in Germany. It's not supposed to be eaten (because it tastes terribly) but it is intoxic so there's no risk for children. The recipe is simple and inexpensive so it is great for simply having some fun crafting without the risk to waste any of that expensive polymer clay.

You will need:

1.5 cups of flour

0.5 cups of cornstarch

1 cup of salt

1 cup of water

A few drops of oil (optional)

(Sidenote: you can make smaller batches if you use spoons instead of cups)

How it's done:

Dissolve the salt in warm water. This step is really important so don't you dare skip it! 

Mix the rest of the ingredients together and kneed it. It should have the consistency of play dough and shouldn't stick or crumble. If it crumbles, add some water. If it sticks, add flour. 

Once you have the desired consistency, you can start playing with it. You could roll it out and use some cookie cutters to make Christmas cookies for your children to play with. You could make a hole into each of the cutouts to make ornaments for your christmas tree. You could form letters to spell a name or word to stick it to a door (inside the house though). Maybe you want to make some doll food like I did here? Or how about handprints or fingerprints or paw prints? Just make sure you don't try to make something that is too thick since it will shrink a bit while drying, which could lead to some...let's say unusual results. 

Once you're happy with the shapes, you can either leave them to dry for the next few days or pop them into the oven. I don't have any experience with putting salt dough into the oven though since I don't want to heat the whole oven for just a few little pieces that could totally air dry as well. 

Either way, make sure your pieces are completely dry before you paint and seal them. To give cookies a baked look, use some chalk or chalk pastels, rub some yellow on all around the cookie, then take some light brown for shading the top. Seal the chalk/chalk pastel with a coat of clear nail polish or some waterproof spray on polish. You can use acrylic paint to paint the pieces, too. Acrylic paint already seals the pieces too, so you won't have to polish them. Even if you don't want to paint your pieces, it's better to polish them since they will draw water from the air over time and this will ruin them. 

I wish you a happy day and a nice start to the weekend!