Thainie Crafts: Ornaments

With the holidays coming up, get ready for some festive posts!  Especially to make up for the lack of postings :-) Here is an article I did for a magazine recently on how to make your own ornaments with your child's handprint.  I found the recipe for the dough from Pinterest (love this website) and changed a few things, like  painting the ornament with acrylic and modpodging it when done.  

I actually like this dough recipe more than modeling clay or plaster since it's easy to make and holds up pretty good.  Just an important note to use really, really, really low heat when you are baking it in the oven since you do not want to make pita bread!  Yes this happened to me, one had ballooned up like a pita bread when the oven was too hot.  I would even adjust the heat to be less than 200 degrees.

This can also be baked in a toaster oven on very very very low heat too (always watch it closely).  The rule is steady low heat and longer duration.  Once it comes out, air dry it for a day and then paint.  I was saddened that after painting the ornament it had softened but after air drying a few days, surprisingly it's now hard as a rock!  So if you don't want to bake it in the oven, it will harden with air drying over a few days in a dry place.  

Overall it was a fun craft to do with the kids and it looks beautiful on the Christmas tree.  Happy crafting!