Salt Dough Table Place Names

For our family the Christmas table is extra special and I tend to go overboard with decorating it. We have confetti, ribbons, glitter, candles, special plates and cutlery for the day and extra special glasses that only come out for Christmas and special occasions. This year with J enjoying his craft and Christmas I really wanted him to have a part in it and we took the opportunity to extend on the enjoyment of the Salt Dough Decoration making and decorating and made some place name holders.

What you need

Salt Dough mix
1 cup of salt
1 cup of all purpose/plain flour
1/2 cup of water added gradually.

Holly leaf cookie cutter

Decorating
Green acrylic paints
Glitter Glue
Any additional decorations that you want.

How the fun happens

We mixed up the salt dough together – this time it worked better as I gave J a small part of the water and then added more to his little jug to make sure that the mix wasn’t too wet. We then used our hand pat method for flattening the dough and used a holly leaf cookie cutter to cut out 8 leaves for the 8 people that will be having meals over Christmas with us.

It was then put in the oven for 2 hours at just under 100 degrees. The Imagination Tree this week explained the importance of the low heat

It is VERY important not to have the oven on too high. This will cause the salt dough to bubble up and fill with air, as essentially it is being cooked. What you are really aiming for is to dry them out thoroughly, over a slow period of time.

I can say that this really does happen and I threw away a set the other day because thinking that I could speed up the drying process I turned the heat up… but NO all that happened was very cooked (read that as burnt) bubbly salt dough decorations.

One they were cooked and dry J painted the leaves green with acrylic paint. He had to paint both sides – luckily we have a vinyl table cloth and using acrylic paints which are water based the paint from the reverse came off quite easily.

Once the leaves were dry I used glitter glue to write the family members names on the leaves as J is too young to write if he was older then he would have written the names himself copying or knowing the words. I have then covered them in PVA (white) glue to preserve them.

Out Now! – Countdown to Christmas Ebook

When life gets hectic in the lead up to Christmas wouldn’t it be great to be able to spend a little time with the family creating gifts for others, food to enjoy together and traditions that make magical Christmas Memories?

But what actually happens is you spend hours searching through Pinterest looking for ideas and realise halfway through saying you are going to start that you have only 1 thing on the materials list!

I’ve been there!

So that is why we’ve put together our 24 favourite Christmas Activities, Crafts and Recipes with full materials lists and step-by-step instructions so that you have everything at your fingertips.

Produced as a PDF you can download, print and use these ideas throughout the festive season with your children and families.

Find out more as we share with you our Favourite Ways to Countdown to Christmas.

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.