Making autumn salt dough decorations is fun and simple. All you need to do is start with the basic recipe and then let your imagination go. You can double and triple the recipe as needed, to make anything out of salt dough that you want to for holiday fun and décor.
Basic Salt Dough Recipe
1 cup table salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup room temperature water
Mix dry ingredients together, then slowly stir in the water until it becomes like a dough. When it’s all sticking together, knead the dough until it’s very smooth and combined, about 10 minutes.
Once you’ve created your crafts, put in a 250-degree Fahrenheit oven on parchment paper to avoid sticking, and bake until the items are dried – usually 4 to 6 hours. It will depend on how thick the items are. They will feel hard and dry when done. Let cool before decorating.
1 – Pumpkin Hand Prints
Form the dough into pumpkin shapes about as big as a paper plate. Then press your child’s hands (or feet) into the dough to form a print. Use a toothpick to write the date on the back of the design and the name of the child. After baking and cooling, let your child paint their creation to finish it. Then let it dry again. You can spray a fixative on it to keep it looking fresh.
2 – Leaf Ornaments
Find some cookie cutters shaped like fall leaves. Then roll out the dough about 1/2 inch thick. Next, using your cookie cutters, cut out the different leaf shapes. Using a toothpick or skewer, poke a hole in the top about 1/4 to 1/2 inch down, where you want to place the string to hang them. Now bake until done and cool.
Once cooled, you can paint them, put glue and glitter on them, or decorate them however you want. Put the string through them and hang then on dried branches. Leaves can also make great place settings for a fall party.
3 – Candy Bowl
You can use any type of mold to create a bowl out of your salt dough. Simply use any item to mold from nature or from the craft store, such as leaves, bowls with texture… really whatever you want, so that you can get a pattern into the dough to make it interesting. Bake it and cool it, then paint it and make it look great. Don’t forget to spray a fixative on it after it’s dry to make it look more like glass.
4 – Get Spooky
You can create awesome ghosts, pumpkins, pinecones, leaves and more out of salt dough. Just form in whatever shape you want, bake, then paint the dough accordingly. You can make spooky ghosts, pumpkins that you can paint, and more that will last forever. Let the kids paint everything the way they want to and they’ll have a lot of fun.
Autumn is the perfect time to start making fun crafts with the kids. As the weather gets colder, doing fun activities that take advantage of the good days outside and the cold days by staying inside having fun will create many wonderful memories.
