Make salt dough decorations

Planning this activity

• You may want to prepare the salt dough before running the session.
• You may want to run this activity over two weeks to give time to bake and paint the salt dough.
• Remember to check for allergies and adjust the recipe as needed.
• Check if there are any items of food (or packaging) that people can’t touch or be near to or if there are items that people might not be comfortable using in the activity. 

Prepare the salt dough

1. Gather everyone in a circle and explain you’ll be making salt dough decorations to celebrate and hang up. Remind everyone taking part that the dough is not edible.
2. Tell everyone that they’re going to make salt dough decorations.
3. Mix together two parts plain flour to one part salt - table salt works well!
4. To make a plain dough slowly add one part water until it’s the right consistency. It needs to be not too crumbly, but not too sticky.
5. To make coloured dough, cut the amount of water in half and replace with paint. Add this slowly to your dry mix of salt and flour until it reaches the correct consistency.
6. Bio-degradable glitter can also be added to make the dough sparkly.

Designing and rolling

1. Show everyone what is available for making ornaments from the salt dough. You may have different coloured doughs, biscuit cutters in various shapes or butter knives for cutting details in the designs.
2. It might be useful to provide pens and paper, so people can plan and draw out their designs for their ornaments.
3. Everyone should take some dough and roll it out onto a floured surface until it’s around 5mm thick.
4. When the dough’s ready, they should then cut out their shapes.
5. Once everyone is happy with their designs, use a sharp pencil or a knitting needle to create a hole at the top. This hole can be used to put string, ribbon or twine through for the decoration to be hung up.
6. Be careful not to make the hole too close to the edge, as this could mean it'll break once baked.

Bake  

1. Place the finished decorations on a flat baking sheet. 
2. Bake the salt dough in an oven, set on its lowest temperature, for three hours. An adult volunteer may want to do this outside of the meeting.
3. When cooked, use heatproof gloves to remove the tray out of the oven.
4. Leave them on a safe, heatproof and stable surface to cool down completely, away from young people.

Decorate

1. After they've cooled down, the decorations can be painted or coloured using marker pens. You could also glue or stick craft items onto them, such as sequins, gems or stickers.
2. Thread a ribbon or twine through the hole in the top and tie a knot.
3. Choose somewhere to hang up your decoration and enjoy!