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Christmas Scented Salt Dough Recipe and Star Garland

Last week when T was off school the 48 hours after a stomach bug she and I started to get some Christmas crafts ready for the following weeks. I love decorating the house with homemade decorations and natural ornaments, as well as making little decorations for the tree, like our baker’s clay snowmen and salt dough decorations that we can keep and remind us of different years we spent together creating. So we got creative, invented our own salt dough recipe based on my favourite quick and easy salt dough recipe, and produced a Christmas Scented Salt Dough Star Garland.

For a while, I’ve been looking at cinnamon ornaments like these from Completly Delicious but with the quantities of cinnamon used and apple sauce something that we haven’t got around the house they would be expensive to make, but the idea of them being scented so that the smell is released into the home is something that I wanted to try and capture as well as create a pretty decoration that we could use for Christmas and possibly throughout winter. I love the smell of Christmas Spices – cloves, orange, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and of course, pine so raiding my spices cupboard and the baking shelf we got mixing to see what would appear.

Materials Needed

Full measurements are included in the printable Christmas Scented Salt Dough Recipe Below.

  • Plain flour
  • Cooking or table salt
  • Warm water
  • Ground ginger
  • Ground cinnamon
  • Ground cloves
  • Orange essence (or Wild Orange Essential Oil)
  • Straw or chopstick or knitting needle
  • Star shaped cookie cutter
  • Ribbon
  • Needle
a painted salt dough Christmas Tree ornament hanging on a tree branch with light behind it.

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Making the Christmas Scented Salt Dough

In a large bowl add the flour, salt, ground spices and the orange – add in half of the cup of water and mix together, as the dough forms add more water until you have collected together all of the dough in a good ball that isn’t too dry or wet.

salt dough mix in a bowl

If it is too wet then add a little more flour to the mix.

Once you have the dough transfer to a lightly flowered surface and knead well.

christmas salt dough recipe coloured and scented for decorations

Roll out and use a cookie cutter to create the shapes. We used a star shaped cutter.

cutting salt dough out with cookie cutters to create salt dough ornaments and decorations

Once they are cut out take either a straw, chopstick or knitting needle and poke two holes into each star as if you were turning it into a button.

child adding holes to salt dough pre-drying to create a star banner for the Christmas tree

On a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and lay out the stars. They will not spread or grow so you can lay them quite close together.

Place in the oven between 50C and 100C and leave for 1 hour.

Turn over the stars and return to the oven for at least another hour – the stars will change colour from a brown to a beige. The smell whilst they are drying in the oven are amazing.

Leave to cool.

adding holes to salt dough stars

You may find when they come out of the oven you need to reopen the holes a little bit – a chopstick or knitting needle gentle pushed through will clear any salt dough from the holes and allow you to easily thread the ribbon through.

threading salt dough stars with ribbon to create a decorative banner

Once they are cool thread the ribbon onto the needle – I used a wool needle and T found this really easy to thread through the holes.

Decide how long you wish your garland to be – I wanted ours to wind a couple of times around the tree so measured it out with a swag and cut the ribbon a little longer to put some ties in place.

T then threaded the ribbon through the holes leaving a small gap between each star and we hung it onto our tree.

Create simple and beautiful decorations for the home with this Christmas scented salt dough recipe and star garland idea to use them.
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simple salt dough star banner made with Christmas scented salt dough

Christmas Scented Salt Dough Recipe

Cerys Parker
Scent your home naturally with ornaments and decorations created with this Christmas Scented Salt Dough using Kitchen Ingredients.
5 from 4 votes

Recipe Video

Ingredients
  

  • 275 g plain flour
  • 125 g table salt
  • cup Up to 1 of water
  • 2 teaspoons ground ginger
  • 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
  • 2 teaspoons ground cloves
  • 1 teaspoon orange essence or 5 drops of Wild Orange Essential Oil

Instructions
 

  • Put the dry ingredients and orange essence or essential oil into a bowl and slowly add the water. Mix in the bowl to combine and then turn out onto a lightly floured surface.
    Create simple and beautiful decorations for the home with this Christmas scented salt dough recipe and star garland idea to use them.
  • Knead until smooth, then roll out to around 1/2 cm thick.
    Create simple and beautiful decorations for the home with this Christmas scented salt dough recipe and star garland idea to use them.
  • Use a cookie cutter to cut out shapes.
    Create simple and beautiful decorations for the home with this Christmas scented salt dough recipe and star garland idea to use them.
  • Don't forget to add the holes with a chop stick.
    Create simple and beautiful decorations for the home with this Christmas scented salt dough recipe and star garland idea to use them.
  • Place on a lined baking tray and put in the oven at the lowest settings for 2-3 hours. Turn over and return to the oven till they are dry.
  • With some ribbon on a large eyed needle thread your shapes onto a ribbon to hang.
    Create simple and beautiful decorations for the home with this Christmas scented salt dough recipe and star garland idea to use them.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

More Christmas Salt Dough Decorations to Make

Love salt dough! Why not try some of these other Salt Dough Ornaments and Decorations.

Rudolph Salt Dough Ornaments for Kids to Make
gingerbread men salt dough ornaments for the Christmas Tree
White Salt Dough Gift Tags

Author
Cerys Parker

Cerys is a marine biologist, environmental educator, teacher, mum, and home educator from the UK. She loves getting creative, whether it is with simple and easy crafts and ideas, activities to make learning fun, or delicious recipes that you and your kids can cook together you'll find them all shared here on Rainy Day Mum.

a painted salt dough Christmas Tree ornament hanging on a tree branch with light behind it.

Unlock the Secrets of Salt Dough Crafting!

Subscribe today and get our top-rated recipe to gorgeous craft ideas straight to your inbox. Plus an exclusive printable recipe.

7 Comments

  1. This is so perfect to do as a retired Grammie with the grand children. They love it. We will never run out of decorations!

    1. Kathryn Schmidt says:

      I only had cooking salt and it was quite coarse. My double recipe may not have been a good idea. It dried as we were working with it. A spray with water helped. I still lost a fair bit of salt as we were working with it.
      I found the shapes had no smell after being in the oven.
      Was there a reason there was so much salt? Other salt dough recipes have 1 part salt to 2 parts flour.

      1. I’m off to check the recipe – it’s been 6 years since we last made it and I think there may have been a transcription error when I moved to the recipe cards. All the other salt dough recipes on the site have 2:1 ratio of flour to salt so I would expect the same. I’ll check today.

  2. Why did you use grams for the flour and salt and teaspoons and cups elsewhere? How can we make the recipe with usual household measuring utensils?

  3. Can these be hardened using your microwave drying method?

  4. Love these, I got really stuck at apple sauce in a recipe too! Cinnamon can be too much, I love the scents you chose here, thanks for the inspiration.

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