Blogger / 7 December, 2017 / Nanny Anita

Melted Bead and Salt Dough Christmas Decorations

A few years ago we made some melted bead decorations. They are without a doubt my favourite ornaments that we have made to date. I just love the way the Christmas lights make them sparkle. They look like mini stained glass windows. Unfortunately over the years some of our original ones have broken, which means we needed to make new ones. Trying to make it slightly different this year we combined the original idea with salt dough to make melted bead and salt dough Christmas decorations.

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

You will need:

• 1 cup plain flour
• ½ cup salt
• 1-1/2 cup of water
• Bowl
• Powdered paint or food colouring (optional)
• Plastic beads
• Cookie cutters
• Thread
• Baking paper
• Toothpick
• Glue (optional)

Making the salt dough

To make the dough combine the flour and salt.

Next add a little bit of water at a time until you get a dough like consistency. If you add too much water just add a little bit more flour. If you want to colour your dough add either powdered tempera paint or food colouring. I gave YC the option of if she wanted to and she decided on red.

Making the decorations

Once your dough is ready roll it out. You don’t want to make it too thick or too thin. We had a little trouble with getting our dough off the table once we had cut it. If you find this to be a problem then just sprinkle some extra flour onto your work surface.

You will need to have two cookie cutters of the same shape, but one will need to be smaller than the other. The only ones we had that came in different sizes were circles.

Cut out your bigger sized shape and then cut the middle part out using the smaller sized cutter.

Move your cut out shapes to a tray lined with baking paper.

Fill the inside part with beads. We used acrylic faceted bicone beads as I still had loads left over from the last time we made melted bead decorations. Pony beads also work really well for this.

Before putting it into the oven make sure that you make a little hole using a toothpick in the salt dough for the thread to go through. I totally forgot to, until after I put them in the oven. Thankfully they had only been in for a few minutes.

Cooking instructions

Put the decorations into a cold oven and then turn it up to 175°c. Once it has reached the correct temperature put the timer on for 10-25 minutes. Keep checking during this time to see if your beads have melted. Ours took about 20 minutes. Also keep checking to make sure that the salt dough doesn’t burn. When you feel that they are ready take them out and let them cool.

Before we added the thread we painted the salt dough with a glittery modge podge glue to make it shinny and shimmery. I also added a bit of strong glue around the edge where the beads touch the salt dough to make sure that they stayed securely in place.

Finally add your thread and hang them on your tree.

I don’t know if they are as good as the originals but I certainly am pleased with how these melted bead and salt dough Christmas decorations turned out. If you enjoyed this craft be sure to check out my felt decorations.

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