I do love christmas crafting. At this hectic time of year, it’s so lovely to spend some calm time with the kids, creating crafty masterpieces to add to our growing collection of homemade christmas ornaments.
We’ve already made some cute pom pom pine cones and mini christmas trees, and our latest fun project is these fab tree decorations made from baking soda dough.
These homemade christmas ornaments were simple and fun to make, here’s how we did it.
How to make baking soda dough ornaments
Start off by making the baking soda dough. You will need:
120g (1 cup) bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
60g (1/2 cup) cornflour (corn starch)
170ml (3/4 cup) warm water
Mix the bicarbonate of soda and cornflour together in a saucepan, then add the warm water and stir until it’s well mixed and there are no lumps.
Put the pan over a medium heat and keep stirring until it starts to bubble. It will gradually dry and turn to a dough consistency. When it looks a bit like play dough, take it off the heat and allow it to cool.
Once the dough has cooled, knead it on a board for a couple of minutes so that it becomes soft and workable. It’s a good idea to sprinkle a little cornflour on the board first, to stop it sticking.
Roll out the dough to about half a centimetre thick; don’t go too thin as it will break up easily, like ours did in the corner.
Once your dough is rolled out, you’re ready to stamp out your christmas shapes (we used standard cookie cutters). You can leave the surface of each shape smooth, or add some texture with patterned stamps. I somehow forgot to take a picture of this part – the kids were really excited and we all got a bit carried away!
Pop your shapes onto a foil-lined baking tray and bake at 100℃ for 1 hour. Once your shapes have cooled down, you can get busy with the decorations.
The kids had lots of fun with glitter glue, gems and sequins.
We made little dough nose shapes for these snowmen, then glued them on and painted the features.
I couldn’t resist a bit of grown-up crafting too, and used my festive stamps to create an embossed effect. I had to give the stamps a really good clean first!
I used a toothpick to create the little holes around the edge of this star.
What do you think of our little craft project? I love the fact that the kids could get really hands-on with most of the stages, and it was great to be able to get creative with my own decorations at the same time. I can’t wait to add our new homemade christmas ornaments to the tree this weekend 🙂
Have you been making your own christmas decorations?
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