We’ve all heard of salt-dough decorations, but how about making them more festive with a gorgeous mixed spice scent?
Supplies For Scented Salt Dough Christmas Decorations
1 cup of ground mixed spice (Or a selection of whatever you have in the cupboard with a nice scent; nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, cloves and cassia all work well.)
1 cup of plain flour
1 cup of salt
2 teaspoons instant coffee granules (This gives the dough a super gingerbread look.)
1 cup of water
Equipment
Large cup
Mixing Bowl
Rolling pin
Christmassy cookie cutters
Something pointy for making holes (A skewer, pencil or straw would do.)
Baking Tray
Selection of paint
Thread or ribbon for hanging
(optional: glitter, buttons)
How To Make Scented Salt Dough Christmas Decorations
- Put the spice, flour and salt into a large bowl and mix well.
- Dissolve the coffee granules in a little hot water and then top up the cup with cold water.
- Gradually add the coffee to the dry ingredients stirring it in until you make a soft dough ball.
- Roll out the dough like pastry, about 1/2 cm thick.
- Cut out your shapes with cookie cutters.
- Pierce a threading hole into each shape and place them flat on the baking tray. (You can gently push glitter onto the surface before baking if you don’t want to paint the shapes later. This is the method I used for the glittered stars shown above. It avoids the need for messy glue later.)
- Bake in a really low oven 50c for 3 to 4 hours until fully dry and hard. (You can leave them to air dry but it will take a few days.)
- When cool decorate and thread ready to hang.
When it came to decorating our shapes my two youngest children opted for the ‘put as many different colours on as much of the front as possible’ approach. I went for a more conventional approach to mine!
The less paint you use the stronger the smell of the spices. Despite all our decorations being made out of the same dough batch, our unpainted glitter stars have the strongest smell.
The finished scented salt dough ornaments can be hung on your tree or even used to decorate wrapped gifts. 
We hope you have lots of fun with this idea.
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Yolanda Crisostomo says
February 22, 2013 at 12:42 amI really like this! We make applesauce cinnamon ornaments too 🙂 I shared this with our group members on CafeMom – Holiday and Party Crafts – with a link back here for the tutorial. Thanks so much!
Emma (My Little 3 and Me) says
February 22, 2013 at 10:00 pmThanks for the share. I hadn’t heard of CafeMom before, the site looks great.