This is an excellent recipe for homemade ornaments.
The dough is very easy to work with, and once baked
the ornaments are very firm and easy to paint.
1 cup salt
2 cups flour
1 cup water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
water-based paints
Place dry ingredients in a bowl, add the water
and oil, then stir until blended. Once the dough
holds together, make it into a ball and
knead it with your hands to make
a smooth texture. Place the dough
on a cutting board, and using a rolling pin, roll the dough
out into a pancake shape that is a bit thicker
than you would use for regular cut-out cookies. Cut out
the ornaments with cookie cutters, design your own
ornaments using a blunt knife, or shape dough with
your fingers. Punch or carve a hole into the top of
the ornament to thread a string through to hang the decoration.
Bake at 250 degrees until hard (for one to two hours).
Once cooled, paint with water-based paints if desired,
or glue on glitter using white household glue. Thread a string
or ribbon through the hole and hang the decoration on the tree
or elsewhere in your home. These ornaments can be reused year after year.
Egg Shell Ornaments
These ornaments are just about the most eco-friendly
holiday ornaments you can make. Although these ornaments are very fragile,
you can reuse them year after
year if you handle them with care.
fresh eggs—as many as you want ornaments
sterilized sewing needle (sterilize by holding over a lit match)
water-based paints
glitter
white household glue
pipe cleaners—as many as the eggs you use
Poke a hole into the top and bottom of
each egg. Blow into the hole at
the top of each egg (the small end) so that the insides of
the egg comes out through the bottom hole, into a bowl
below. Save all the eggs' insides for cooking. Paint the eggs
with water-based paints, or coat the eggs with
white household glue before covering their surface with glitter.
Bend one end of each pipe cleaner into a "U" shape (so that
the "U" is about 1 inch in length). Gently insert the other end of the pipe cleaner into the
top of the egg, and use the end with the "U" to hang the egg on a tree.
