Yesterday was a miserable Saturday, though we made it out for a bit of shopping – but it was the kind of day you’d stay indoors, so I did a bit of googling and found a recipe for Salt Dough Christmas Decorations by Kirstie Allsop. Even better, you can microwave them, so they don’t need baking in the oven.

So, what to do?

A cup of flour, half a cup of salt, and half a cup of water, mix the lot together and you’ll get there. It was sticky for a while so I added extra flour and salt which helped.

After it was ready, we rolled it out onto a board and got our old faithful Christmas cookie cutters out. They’re quite small, so I think we need to be looking at bigger ones for next time… We also made an M, a D and an H (mummy, daddy and H) which we could do whatever we felt like doing with.

Once they’re done, I put a sheet of greaseproof paper on the microwave glass plate, and arranged the shapes – and made a hole through each one (I had no cocktail sticks so used the end of a corn on the cob holder).

It says to microwave for two minutes, but I felt like these needed longer – they were still a bit soft later on, so were left to dry overnight.

Overnight the shapes weren’t properly dry so we microwaved them a little longer which helped, then I got my watercolour paints out and mixed a few colours  painting the tops of trees green and the trunks in brown. I’m not sure why I bothered as once the paint had dried we gave up trying to do intricate designs and just got a pile of glitter and painted glue onto the shapes (we used Tiger’s £3 stuff) and dipped it in there, before threading each shape onto some cotton for next weekend (when they’ll either be part of a chain or on their own individual cotton).

This is the result : 

It was a really simple straightforward task to do, and the painting was fun. There were no rules other than they’re going on the tree next weekend – and I’m pleased with the results!