Activities & Days Out / 17 December, 2018 / Nanny Anita

Marbled Salt Dough Christmas Tree Decorations

Wow – I can’t believe that it is that time of year again. It seems like only yesterday that we were making Christmas tree decorations last year. This year I have a whole bunch of new Christmas themed crafts and activities planned. First up are these marbled  salt dough christmas tree decorations.

Make sure you follow my Christmas board on Pinterest for more ideas.  Don’t forget to save the pin for later. 

This craft was a last minute addition as I was told that my eldest charge has to take a home made decoration into school by Friday. As I hadn’t got any of my original craft supplies sorted I turned to a traditional craft that only needs a few household ingredients. In the end we actually ended up making two different batches as the first didn’t turn out so well.  We used food colouring and liquid water paints, and although the dough looked very vivid, by the time it was dry the colour had faded and the colours became a peachy colour when trying to obtain that marbled effect. The second time we did them we used powdered paints and a slightly different ratio of salt and flour.

You will need:

• 1-cup salt
• 2-cups flour
• Up to 1?2 cup water (add it little by little)
• Powdered paints (we used tempera paints)
• Rolling pin
• Cookie cutters
• Baking tray
• Straw
• Ribbon to hang them with.
• PVA glue

Mix together the salt, flour and water to create your dough, knead it for a while to create a smooth mix.

Divide the dough up and knead in some food colouring – we used Christmas colours.

Fold the different colours together – be careful not to over mix them or you will end up with a brown colour rather than a marbled effect.

Roll out the dough and use the cookie cutters to cut out your shapes.

Use a straw to make a hole at the top of the shape – for the string to go through.

Place it on a baking tray and put in the oven at 100c for 2-3 hours, alternatively you can leave it out to dry over 24-48hrs.

Too make them really shiny paint on some PVA glue.

My charges loved making these little decorations – in fact we had arguments about who was going to use which cookie cutter. If they had been able to they would have made 100 more of these decorations, but they ran out of dough.

Next time I will clearly have to double the recipe for them.

This activity may help development of:

• Muscle tone from all the kneading
• Fine motor skills

Pin for later: