‘Tis the Season to be Crafty

I don’t know about yours, but my kids sure don’t mind a bit of mud.
And yet, now that it’s often cold and wet outside, and dark early, we do spend more time indoors. A lot more. But sometimes, we just take a bit of outside inside with us. And not just in the form of muddy prints on the floor.

As I am definitely not ready for Christmas decorations until midway through December, I appreciate how my kids love to make ‘fall baskets’. Simple enough, they take some of the things that fall from the trees in autumn (or fall, yes) and try to come up with a nice way to display them. No fancy arrangements from the florist needed in this house to bring seasonally suitable decorations in.

But I know, by the time you are reading this, for many of you it will be too late to start autumnal decorations and you will be looking forward to Christmas. Do read on, this post is for you.

This year, one of my kids came up with the idea to add salt-dough figures -along with getting creative with scraps of paper, wool and fabric (and another happily joined in in the plan).

And see, salt-dough is also very suitable to make Christmas decorations. Even if I am personally not yet ready for them.

Why would you want to use salt-dough?

• Salt-dough is very easy to make.
• You just need flour, salt and some oil, so you are very likely to be able to whip it up when you find yourself unexpectedly cooped up inside with just too miserable weather outside.
• It is very easy to handle even for the littlest hands, leaving little mess.
• You can keep the results for pretty much eternity if you like them.
• If you don’t like the results, they are fully biodegradable!

How do you make salt-sough?

• Take two cups of flour to one cup salt and one cup water.
• Add about one tablespoon of (any kind of) oil per cup of flour.
• Mix and knead until a nice, workable, non-sticky dough. Add a bit of water or flour if desired.
• Shape any way you like.
• Bake in the oven on 100˚C for one to four hours, depending on thickness.
  Or save some energy by drying on the radiator (or near the hearth). This may take a few days but will in the end lead to just as dry and firm results.

Any unused dough can be kept in a container for at least one week, depending on how clean the hands that handled it were.

You can make 3d creations, such as snowmen, Santas and what not, as mine made pumpkins, toadstools and toadstool-creatures.
Keep a candle handy to try for size if you want to make your own candle holders.
You can even braid strings of dough into a wreath.

Or, you can roll out the dough and use cookie cutters to cut out any desired shape. Why not try pressing in a holly leaf and cutting round its edges?
If you pierce these shapes at the top, you can pull a string through after baking and hang your decorations -whether in a tree or elsewhere.

You could also make a larger sheet of dough and press in (holly) leaves and pine twigs to make a print. Try adding a Christmas message, writing with a skewer.

After baking, the salt-dough can be painted as desired with any kind of paint.
Alternatively, you could add a drop of food colouring while kneading the ingredients together to get an even coloured result.

Just go ahead and have fun discovering what your kids -or yourself- will come up with!
We’d love to hear about it in the comments.