Easy Ornament Recipe

When I was a kid my Aunt taught me to make ornaments with the simplest ingredients-- flour, salt, and a bit of water. Since I am in desperate need of some cutesifying in the Christmas decor department, I figured I'd make some Christmas ornaments with the kids. I used the old ornament recipe to make starfish and sand dollars. The kids made Gingerbread men.




Funny thing is, once the ornaments cooled from baking, the kids pulled their Gingerbread Men off the tray and played with them for HOURS! Who knew? My Middle Man loved his so much, he slept with the poor, haggard, legless Gingerbread Man who lost his legs somewhere in those hours of playing. Let's see you run now, Mr. Gingerbread!



I'll probably paint those starfish and sand dollars a pearlescent white and baby blue. We used to just dip the ornaments in polyurethane after painting them. You can also get an aged color to the dough, if you don't want to paint them, by using a bit of instant tea or using leftover coffee instead of water. Then did them in polyurethane. I think it would be fun to use chalkboard paint to paint stars and then write some cute words on them to hang on the tree-- "Christ", "Love", "Family", "Santa"... etc...

The dough is very easy to mold with, so you can make just about anything. Just add little bits of water if dough gets crumbly while you're working. Just make sure you don't put too much water in, it really won't work well if you do. You can always add more water, but you can't take the water out.

The ones in the first picture are finger starfish. I'm happy with how those came out. I poked little holes with a kabob skewer to make them look a bit more real. You can hot glue bows, ribbons, hemp string for hangers after you're all done. You can also put half of a paperclip as a hanger before baking and it will just harden into the dough.

With my first batch of ornaments, I made these "starfish" which didn't turn out quite like I wanted (ok, nothing like I wanted). They look cartoonishly bubbly. But they will work for gifts maybe. I just hot glued some hemp twine for hangers.


Ornament Recipe
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup salt
approximately .5 to 1 cup hot water

Mix dry ingredients, add water slowly until you get the dough right. It will be very similar to playdough textured. Don't add so much water that it gets sticky. If it happens, just add a bit of flour until texture is right. Bake at 285 degrees for 2 hours, or until hard.

It's that easy! Let me know if any of you make some ornaments with this recipe, I'd love to see what you create!

Thanks for stopping by!

~*Stephanie~*