Learn how to make salt dough Santa ornaments! This super easy DIY project can be given to friends and family as gifts!
You and your child can choose how involved they want to be with this craft. My toddler and I mixed up the dough, rolled it out, and made handprints together. I did the rest. My goal was a cute activity, but also a keepsake that we would want on our tree forever. We gifted several to friends and family, so I wanted them to look nice.
The fun thing about salt dough is that it’s as soft as Play-Doh, and you can use it for a wide variety of crafts. If you don’t want to make handprint-shaped salt dough ornaments, you can opt to roll out the dough and use cookie cutters to make the shapes.
How to Make Salt Dough Santa Ornaments
This is totally optional, but since I get so into holiday crafts that I basically become an elf, I bought a very inexpensive and easy-to-use UV resin machine so that I could make more professional-looking ornaments with a thick shiny coating. The machine and materials can be purchased together for under $20.
This simple salt dough can be made with just three ingredients that you likely have on hand already. I did also tried making these ornaments with air dry clay, but found that it broke too easily. Salt dough is stronger and easier to work with.
There are many slightly different salt dough recipes. This is based on one that I found on Instagram from Wooden That Be Somethin.
Salt Dough Recipe:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup salt
3/4 cup water (plus a little extra as needed)
Additional Supplies:
Acrylic Paint
Ribbon
Glue
Glitter
Modge Podge or a UV Resin Machine
Mix the flour, salt, and water together and knead into a dough.
Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough until it’s about 1/4 inch thick.
Add your child’s handprints and use a knife to cut around the handprints.
Repeat this using all the dough – we made 8 handprint ornaments. Take a little time to clean up the edges and use a straw to make a hole for some ribbon.
Bake for 2 hours at 200 degrees. Note: It seems normal for the bottom to still look a bit uncooked – just make sure it’s hard.
Let the ornaments cool/air dry for 24 hours before painting.
Paint with acrylic paints. To paint the Santa, paint the background and beard white. Paint the hat red. Add Santa’s eyebrows, eyes, nose, and rosy cheeks. I added gold glitter to create the pom pom at the end of the hat.
I wrote my daughter’s name and the year on the back with a permanent marker.
I really wanted these ornaments to look polished and to stand the rest of time, so I broke out my mini UV Resin Machine and sealed the Santa’s. This gave them a glazed look and made them stronger.
Looking for some more ways to spread holiday cheer? You could watch a Christmas movie and play cheesy holiday movie BINGO, or bake Christmas cookies.