The kids and I made many beautiful scented salt dough ornaments today.  We are excited to decorate our house with them and give them as gifts.  Our easy and simple scented salt dough recipe provides a wonderful tactile and olfactory experience for little ones.

This post is the last in the 12 Months of Sensory Dough series!   We made salt dough ornaments last month, and gluten-free salt dough ornaments for Christmas last year.  You can see all of our sensory dough posts here.  We will be gifting our ornaments, as well as decorating our own house with these beautifully-aroma-ed decorations!!

Invitation to Create

Each of the children were gifted a special early Christmas present: their very own baking tools!  They each received a rolling pin, a pastry mat, and little pie pans.  We didn’t use our pie pans, but each child loooved their own rolling pin and personal mat.  They had a wonderful time rolling out their dough, and printing with their ornaments!

As they worked, I put the completed ornaments on a cookie sheet, covered in parchment paper. (May tried to sneak a lovely ornament on the sheet early.)

John cut each of the ornaments with a lot of precision.  He chose stars, and May made trees.

I don’t have a lot of pictures of the process because my hands were very flour-y.  John added the red to the green and also made a very beautiful marbled effect!!

Getting the scented salt dough ready for the oven!  John rolled his dough so beautifully.  He discovered that he had to keep adding flour to his mat.  He thought the dough behaved hilariously :) (We poked holes with a straw for adding a ribbon later!!)

Decorating our home

I added white ribbon to the ornaments and we hung them up above our Advent Calendar in the living room.

We also made beautiful handprints (shhhh, a gift for grandma!) and added ribbon to those as well.  Right now, they are hanging in our kitchen, I’ll have to make more because I love them so much!!

Best Scented Salt Dough Recipe for Christmas Ornaments

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup salt
• 3/4 cup water (with essential oils and food coloring)
• essential oils: we used cinnamon bark & peppermint
• food coloring: we used red & green

Directions:

I mixed the flour and salt together, then added the essential oil and food coloring to my water, then added the water 1/4 cup at a time to the dry ingredients.  I found that exactly 3/4 cup was perfect for the moldable dough we were looking for!

Next, we rolled the dough out, making sure to use a little flour on top and bottom to prevent sticking.  We rolled out pretty thin, which I think it better for baking.

We cut with a cookie cutter, using a spatula to get onto a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper.

Then we baked for about 2 1/2 hours at 200 degrees.  I turned them at about the half way point and kept checking them until I thought they were done.

Super easy scented salt dough recipe.

Pin it!

Tools used in this post:

This post is a part of the Best of the Best Sensory Doughs: 12 Months of Sensory Dough!  Every month, on the 12th of the month, we will be sharing a post on a different sensory dough.  Check out our collaborative Sensory Dough Pinterest Board for tons of ideas!! 

Here are the wonderful co-hosts:

Lemon Lime Adventures, Glittering Muffins, I Heart Crafty Things, Little Bins for Little Hands, Look! We’re Learning!, Natural Beach Living, Powerful Mothering, Still Playing School, Sugar Aunts, The Eyes of a Boy, The Life of Jennifer Dawn

Do you have a post on Scented Salt Dough that you’d like to share? Please link below!  Please read the following guidelines before linking up:

• Share family-friendly posts related to the month’s theme. Feel free to link old or new posts that highlight your favorite recipes for sensory dough. Failures and unsuccessful attempts are welcome.

• We ask that no posts are linked with copy/paste recipes from other sources. If you use a recipe from another source, please link back to the original recipe.

• By linking up, you give permission to share your post and one photograph in future posts and through social media channels.

• The linky will remain open for two weeks. On the 12th of each month, all co-hosts will post a new dough with their spin, highlighting at least one post from the month before and pin each post to the 12 Months of Sensory Dough Board.