I’ve been mentioning this salt dough ornaments a few times already, and decided it needed its own article. So if you’re looking for Easy Salt Dough Christmas Ornament for Your Toddler, you’ve come to the right place. The recipe is a simple on and only needs flour, salt and water, and there’s little chance you are missing any of this. The good thing about this recipe is that it’s baby friendly so your kid will not have an allergic reaction or a toxic reaction, except if he’s allergic to flour or salt.
Salt Dough Recipe
2 parts Flour
1 part Salt
1 part Water
Stir the flour and the salt together. I put parts and not cups, so I don’t limit your quantities for you and you can make as much as you need. Poor the water slowly, carefully, because it could be possible you won’t need a full glass, and mix them up until you have a soft dough, not too sticky (poor more flour if needed), and not too dry (poor more water if dry), until you can easily knead it and your kids can easily leave their marks in it. You can roll it with a rolling pin, cut the shapes or ask your kids to leave their marks and then cut the shapes, depending of what your goals are and what kind of Christmas Ornaments you have on your list.
You can wait 3-4 days to dry and then paint, or add food coloring to the dough, or bake in the oven at 100 degrees C/200F for 2-3 hours. To tell you the truth your kids won’t want to wait 3-4 days to dry so they can paint them, so the oven is the easy way, thought they need to let the cool for a bit, but make sure the heat is not higher because otherwise the ornaments crack in places and can easily be broken.
Note (to self): When you’re kneading the dough make sure you don’t have cuts on your hands (like I had), it will hurt. Also I found it was easier for us to lift the shapes if we also added some oil (even baby oil) to the surface and kneaded a few drops in the dough too.
So for some ideas of Easy Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments for Your Toddler, check these out and get inspired. Your babies, toddlers and even preschoolers will have fun making Christmas ornaments that will become heartwarming memories.
1. Santa Hand Print Ornament
Photo credit: Mommasociety
After you’ve finished the salt dough you can roll it out so it fits your baby’s hand a few times, because we have a few ideas that need the full hand print. Ask your kid to put his hand gently and press it yourself so it doesn’t go thru. Make a hole at the top, where the ribbon will pass thru, with a straw. Then cut around the hand print so it doesn’t have too much dough on the sides. After it is completely baked and cooled down paint the 4 fingers, except the thumb, white, the thumb and top of the hand will be red, and in the middle leave a bit of space for the face, and make it pink, add the details, eyes, mouth, let it dry, you can write dates and names on the back, and your Santa Hand Print Ornament is ready.
2. Mutant Ninja Turtle Hand Print Ornament
Photo credit: Iheartartsncrafts
After you make the hand print, hole, bake and cool down the shape, you can either paint it all green, cut a piece of material for the eye shape and glue it on the shape, then glue googly eyes on the fabric, or paint the mask yourself. So it depends if you’re working with your toddler or your preschooler, the first can glue after paint, and the second can paint the details better.
3. Mitten Hand Print Ornament
Photo credit: Funhandprintartblog
You can add a bit of food coloring in the dough and turn it all into a color of your kid’s choosing, and cut around the hand print to form a cute little mitten. After you bake it, or dry it, you can glue some cotton balls or fabric on the on the bottom to make it an even prettier mitten.
4. Snowmen Hand Print Ornament
Photo credit: Learningandexploringthroughplay
You can cut a square shape around your baby’s hand print, and after it is baked and cooled you can paint the area around the shape blue with tinny white flakes, the hand print all white, let the paint dry, then paint the details of the snowmen, hats, scarfs, eyes, nose, mouth and buttons. They will look too cute and perfect to decorate your tree.
5. Christmas Tree Hand Print Ornament
Photo credit: Theimaginationtree
Paint the hand print green, and you can paint the surroundings blue or any other colors. When it dries he can add the colorful ornaments in your Christmas Tree, then add it to your collection.
6. Minion Foot Print Ornament
Photo credit: Iheartartsncrafts
As you did with the hand prints, you can repeat with the foot prints. Gently put his foot on the nicely spread sheet of dough, and apply light pressure with your hand. Cut around the foot print, make a hole on top, in this case it will be the heel, bake, cool and paint.
The first part with the toes should be blue, the second yellow, either paint the black mask or glue some black fabric and on top you can glue or paint some googly eyes. Can’t get easier than this to be honest.
7. Penguin Foot Print Ornament
Photo credit: Messylittlemonster
Leave the belly white and he can paint the rest black. If you think that’s difficult for him to do just stick some paper tape only on the belly area. He can paint as messy as he wants and you can take off the tape when he’s finished. Glue some googly eyes, add an orange beak, a scarf and hat would look adorable, and you got the cutest penguin ever.
8. Olaf Foot Print Ornament
Photo credit: Iheartartsncrafts
The adored Frozen character, Olaf, would be mostly done by you so you can get the details right, because if you don’t…. OMG! Panic…it will look like a regular snowman, which for some toddlers I know can be devastating. Still you’ll have your kids footprints with a snowman face on it, so it’s still a win for mommy and daddy, and can be a great Christmas present for family and friends, don’t worry too much.
9. Reindeer Foot Print Ornament
Photo credit: Funhandprintartblog
Either have brown salt dough or paint it brown after, glue a red pom pom and googly eyes, and some antlers behind on top of his head, and you got yourself Santa’s little helper, Rudolf.
10. Safe Keep Finger Prints Ornament
Photo credit: Thepinterestedparent
You can roll the dough and cut it with cookie cutters in heart shapes, stars or whatever you want. Whatever you make, make sure it is big enough for all your family members thumb prints will fit in that shape. You can paint the prints and add some faces and write under each one who’s thump it is.
11. Snowman Finger Print Ornament
Photo credit: Craftymorning
Let him put his thumb, because it’s bigger, tree times on the round shaped dough, each print under the other to form a Snowman’s body. Make hole, bake, cool and start painting, by know he will know what colors to use and what to make.
We started on some of these easy salt dough print ornaments to make with your toddler already, and had great results. Just make sure you make plenty of dough, we only made one full hand print and cut the rest with cookie cutters because I didn’t make enough and apparently I have a big boy now, would’ve been easier with a baby, though the baby wouldn’t be able to enjoy it as much as my toddler did with these easy salt dough print ornaments. Enjoy your keep sake ornaments that can be awesome for Christmas presents from your kids to other family members. Grandma will always cherish the little prints. Have fun and see you later!