Salt dough ornaments are cheap and easy to make, and once painted, vinyl works great on them!
Supplies Needed:
- Salt, Water Flour - for salt dough (recipe below)
- Rolling, pin, baking sheet
- parchment paper or wax paper
- Cookie Cutters or Stencil for shapes
- straw for poking holes in tops
- paint (I used Martha Stewart Chalk Paint - acrylic works great too)
- svgs & vinyl
- twine, ribbon, or string for hanging
- Time. These take at least 2 hours to bake, then they have to cool, then you have to wait for the coats of paint to dry...
Make The Salt Dough
Two tips here. 1. Roll the dough as thin as possible. This works best between two sheets of parchment paper - the dough is a little sticky, and if you roll it between the parchment paper it won't "lift up" on the rolling pin. Normally I'd flour my rolling pin, but I don't want to add extra flour to these. 2. Bake at the lowest temp your oven allows. They are less likely to bubble up at lower temps. I baked mine for 2 hours at 250, and some of mine bubbled. Next time I'll try 150 for 3 hours.
Recipe:
- 1 cup flour (plain, NOT self rising!)
- 1/2 cup salt
- 1/2 cup water
Mix with a fork until it was well mixed, then kneaded it together.
Roll out thin. The thinner they are, the less time they take to dry, but you don't want them quite so thin that they are see through.
So, very thin, but thick enough to cut. Try for 1/4 inch or less.
Now you can use a cookie cutter to cut out the shapes. Although I have a few rabbit cookie cutters, and, no joke, a dozen chicken cookie cutters, I apparently do not own an egg shaped cookie cutter. So I made a stencil.
To Make An Egg Shaped Stencil
- Open Design Space
- Upload an egg shape (Download a free svg here)
- Size your egg - mine is 2 wide by 2.8 tall
- Duplicate the egg. Duplicate again. With all three eggs side by side, and all selected choose Align at the top of the design space screen, align top.
- Select all, align, choose "Distribute horizontally"
- Select all, Attach.
- Now click on your 3 eggs and duplicate. Then duplicate again.
- Place your 3 rows of eggs one on top of the other, select all, align right.
- Select all, Attach.
- Place a sheet of 8.5x11 card stock on a mat, and click make it. Under the mat on this screen, change the size to 8.5x11
I placed the stencil on top of my dough, placed the parchment sheet back over the top, and rolled my rolling pin over the top to press the stencil into the dough. Then with a sharp paring knife, I cut around each egg.
When I pulled the stencil off, the excess dough came right up with the paper. But it also peeled right off the card stock, so it was easy to roll that excess out and do this again.
Use a straw to add holes to the top of each ornament.
Bake at a low temperature, for at least two hours.
I baked mine at 250 for 2 hours, and although they were perfectly done, a few of mine bubbled. A lower temperature for a longer period of time sometimes helps to prevent that.
Then I painted them all in Martha Stewart Vintage Paint
Acrylic paints work just fine - any craft paint is fine. Earlier this year I bought a bunch of Martha Stewart craft paints at 70% off at Michaels. Full price, I would never buy this paint, it's expensive! But I do love these paints. Really, really love these paints. Which surprised me, because I do not like chalk paint for furniture at all - I think it's a pain to use and doesn't cover well and I can get the same effect with much less work using regular paint. But for crafts? I love these "matte chalk finish" paints from Martha Stewart.
I painted these before bed, and when I woke up the next morning, the paint has a slight crackle effect that I loved. Only on the ones I had painted lightly, a thicker coat prevented that.
I flipped them over, and painted the other side.
Once dry, I dipped a sponge paintbrush into a charcoal colored paint (same brand, but any brand would work) I brushed the bunnies with that paint, then using a soft dry brush, wiped most of the paint back off.
Then I rinsed out my sponge brush, and while wet, took it over the bunnies to take off more paint. I always paint like this - adding and removing paint several times, sometimes, until I like the look.
The eggs I left just white.
Then I added vinyl. Be sure to measure your designs
I made all of my designs 1.8 wide, and even though my eggs are 2 inch wide at the largest part, that was a bit wide for some of them. 1.5 wide would probably have been a safer choice, but I ended up happy with the way they all fit, it was just a little close to the edges for some.
Any vinyl will work, but my favorite is Frisco Permanent Vinyl in matte black. It's $16.99 for 30 feet, with free shipping, on amazon, and I love this stuff. It's matte, soft, cuts great, weeds easily, and holds up great on everything I've used it on. Find it here: https://amzn.to/3agDD2b
If you use these, once uploaded, ungroup. Select the text and attach, so the letters stay together. Select all of the flower and weld, so that it cuts all together. And be sure to check the sizes and resize to fit your eggs, as needed.
Any simple silhouette image will work great for these. Here's a tutorial on how to easily clean up simple clipart to use in design space.
This tree sits on this bench in our hallway year round, as a sort of night light. I like to decorate it for the different seasons, and now that I started with this idea, I will likely have salt dough ornaments for each season. I'm picturing stars and flags for the 4th of July, and pumpkins in the fall... I have a large, old, chest that will replace this bench, as soon as I get it painted.
No comments:
Post a Comment