Stained Glass Christmas Crafts From Salt Dough

The girls and I have been busy creating lots of fun crafts this week. One of their favorites has been the stained glass suncatchers and salt dough ornaments we made. They were so simple and fun to make. The girls have gotten lots of compliments on them. The recipe is very easy, but I can mess up easy! I used an extra cup of salt, but they turned out anyway. Thank goodness.

SALT DOUGH RECIPE

2 Cups flour
1 Cup salt
1 Cup water

Mix ingredients well and knead dough until smooth. Divide into three equal amounts and roll into a ball. Turn dough out onto waxed paper and roll out to about half inch thickness. Have child place their hand on rolled out dough and help them gently press their hand and fingers into the dough. Gently raise hand. Use a sharp knife to cut handprint our of dough. It helps in removing the cutout dough if you fold the fingers back onto the hand part. You may need to use the tip of your knife to carefully help picking the dough up.

After the handprint is removed fill the area left with clear pony beads. We used round ones and also long ones and a few square shapes. Make sure you make a hole in the top so you can thread some string to hang your suncatcher with. Place on a cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 1.5 to 2 hours. Turn off the oven and let suncatchers cool slowly in the oven so they don't crack when they are removed from the oven. Suncatchers and ornaments will turn brown when baked so don't be alarmed. You can cover the brown color with paint or glitter. 

To make the ornaments you use the same dough and instructions, just use cookie cutters to cut the ornaments out. It does seem to help the dough not stick to the wax paper if you add a little bit of flour to the surface of the wax paper. I also had to add a bit of extra flour to the dough because it was too sticky. I added just enough so they weren't sticky when I kneaded the dough and it didn't stick to my hands.

           Have fun and enjoy making these with your little ones. Or older ones too! 

Our salt dough Christmas craft creations!