I’ll be (Going) Handmade for Christmas

Tags

ornaments, rust-oleum, salt dough, Sharpie, spray enamel, stamped

You Will Need:

Flour, Salt, and Water (This is the recipe I used)
Food coloring (OPTIONAL)
Rust-oleum Enamel Spray (I used semi-gloss but they have matte and gloss too)
Sharpies (or acrylic paint)
A Straw, a toothpick, or some tool to make a hole to hang the ornament from.
Ribbon or string

I found that my normal dough was not sticky and I did not need to continually knead it in flour. However, the dyed dough (probably due to the added moisture) needed more flour because it was so sticky. I made these ornaments over a few days and stored my dough in a Tupperware; there were no problems with drying. I read some posts that suggested air-drying for several days but I was impatient. Cooking in the oven puffs up the ornaments and can often make your rubber stamp imprint very hard to see and color in. Some stamps I tried simply would not work due to stickiness or the complexity of the design. If you have problems I would suggest stamping on paper and cutting it out or attempting to freehand it. In addition, if you make a hole with a toothpick make sure it is large enough because the hole can shrink. You can put ink on your stamp but I did not experiment with this so proceed with caution.

The Sharpies work very well but make sure to smooth the edges of your ornament because the texture can be very difficult to color on. When coloring your hands can become very colorful and the Sharpies can smudge easily so be careful! In addition, when spraying with enamel, be in a well-ventilated area and don’t spray it too heavy or some bleeding will occur.

The small snowflake’s hole was not big enough and I had to attempt to carve it larger.

I printed out a picture of a Nike shoe and cut out the parts that I could. I used a knife and a toothpick.

For these I dyed the dough red and green.

These are the same dough but the one on the left I cooked at 300° for about 1 hour and 15 minutes and the one on the right I cooked at 325° for 50 minutes. I think that I overcooked the one on the left and undercooked the one on the right… They’re also the same cookie cutter but I smushed the right one more.