Salt Dough Coaster – a perfect grandparents gift

We’re trying to make some presents to give to family this year and for J and T’s Nannie and Granddad we’ve made some salt dough coasters for their tea cups.

As a child I made my parents a coaster out of clay at school – properly kiln dried and then glazed and I really hope that my kids get the opportunity to make something like that for us when they go to school, however at home we don’t have a kiln and with J and T being 3 and under it was easier to make something up with Salt dough.

I used our Quickest Ever Salt dough Recipe and made up a batch according to the recipe there.

J rolled out the dough for us making it quite thick (well we don’t want it to crack with the heat of a mug on it) and then using a circular cutter (I have a set for pie making) we cut out 3 circles (one for us to keep).

Then using a variety of different things we made marks in the top – T and J created their own designs and then we put them in our microwave. Now because the dough was very thick I knew we needed to be careful to cook them in the microwave. Instead of 3 minutes I put them in on 30 seconds at a time and turned them after each 30 seconds until they were fully dry. None of them bubbled or burnt because of this.

We then got some pearl acrylic paints and set about painting them – green for Granddad and purple for Nannie. I put them on the side to dry and now we’re ready to wrap them up in some homemade wrapping paper which we’re going to make inspired by Red Ted Art and The imagination Tree’s Cookie Cutter Wrapping Paper and Gift Tags.

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.