There are so many things to love about the holiday season, but near the top of my list are all the fun DIYs I get to do with my kids. In particular, making these salt dough ornaments has been a highlight year after year for my family.

Not only is this salt dough recipe super easy to mix up, but you probably already have every single one of the ingredients in your pantry already. Plus, unlike many other crafts, you’ll actually keep these around and enjoy putting them up on your tree year after year.

Salt Dough Ornaments

If you haven’t worked with salt dough before, I’m excited to introduce it to you! Salt dough is basically what it sounds like – a combination of flour, water, and—of course—salt.

Salt dough is almost like a non-toxic clay. You can mold it into shapes then allow them to either air dry or bake them dry. I particularly like that this is a safe craft for even my younger children. Trust me, if any of your kids start to stick this dough in their mouths, the high salt concentration will make them immediately spit it out!

Salt Dough with Glitter

For this particular project, I wanted to use my salt dough recipe to create glittery snowflakes. So many salt dough recipes call for food coloring, but I was not interested in getting fingers (and who knows what else) stained with food coloring during this craft.

Instead of food coloring, I opted for glitter in our salt dough recipe. It was the perfect addition!

And yes, you’re probably thinking to yourself is glitter REALLY less messy than food dye? Normally I’d say they can cause destruction pretty evenly. However, in this particular project, the glitter in the dough had all the pretty effect without glitter falling off everywhere in my house, unlike so many glitter crafts usually do.

You can be conservative and just give your salt dough snowflake ornaments a light dusting of shimmer or use a very generous amount. I’m talking like half a glitter bottle! If you do so, it will give the dough the appearance of being dyed, without the mess of food coloring.

How to Make Salt Dough Ornaments

Ready to make festive glitter salt dough snowflakes with your kids? Here’s how to do it.

Supplies:

Salt Dough Recipe:

To make the salt dough recipe base, all you need to do is mix your salt and flour in a bowl. (See the recipe card below for exact instrutions)

While stirring, slowly pour in 1/2 cup of water. You want to mix in just enough to make the dough pliable, but not sticky. You may not need to use the full 1/2 cup of water. If your dough seems particularly dry, you can add a few extra drops.

Add the Glitter

Split the dough in half. Mix blue glitter in one half and silver glitter into the other. Be very generous with the glitter. Add 3 to 5 tablespoons until you like the effect.

Knead the glitter into the dough with your hands. See what I mean about how the glitter stays mostly contained within the dough itself?

Create the Snowflake Ornaments

Now it’s time to take the dough and transform it into salt dough ornaments! First, roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness. If your dough sticks, lightly flour your work area and rolling-pin.

Cut out snowflake shapes. Of course, you can use any other shape you might like. A few ideas include:

Christmas tree shapes (mix the dough with green glitter!)
Snowmen
Gingerbread men
Mittens
Angels

But for this post, we’ll stick with snowflake salt dough ornaments. 😉

Making glitter salt dough ornaments in snowflake shapes

This step is very important – don’t forget to add a hole in each snowflake/shape so you can hang it with ribbon later! The easiest way to add this is to use a straw to poke a hole in each snowflake.

Dry the Salt Dough

Place the snowflake cutouts on a cookie sheet covered in parchment paper (foil works too).

snowflake ornament made from salt dough drying

Dry the cutouts. Bake them at 250 degrees for 45+ minutes. Time will vary depending on how thick your ornaments are. A general rule of thumb is that for every 1/4″ of dough, bake time is 45-60 min. If your salt dough ornaments are thinner, bake for less time.

Baking time depends on how thick or thin your cutouts are. Always bake for less and check throughout the process.

You want to remove them from the oven BEFORE they start to brown (unless you prefer that as a “finish.”)

Allow them to sit out on the counter for at least overnight to finish cooling and drying.

Thread a ribbon through the hole and hang them up.

salt dough ornaments shaped like snowflakes hanging

These really adorable glitter salt dough snowflakes are sure to brighten your day. Hang them from suction cups on your windows and mirrors, or create a cute mobile with the snowflakes hanging from different lengths of ribbon.

To store them, wrap them in bubble wrap or tissue paper, and stack them flat.