A Festive Tutorial...

I had planned to complete a small number of festive crafty projects to share with you this week, but Leaff has been keeping me so busy, that I have only managed to complete one! Alas, a good one it is too.

We just love Christmas, and all the fun of decorating the house, and while we love to buy those special finds, it is also fun to try our hand at making some things ourselves.

This year, I found this great little project on the blog Lauren's Closet. We were immediately inspired to try it ourselves, and it was super easy. These gorgeous little ornaments can be used for a variety of things - as tree decorations, as charming home furnishings, as gifts, and even as wrapping decoration
for presents. So as your work lives slow down for the festive break, why not try your hand at making these lovely little decorations - they are even something you could do with children.

Ingredients & Equipment

4 Cups of Plain Flour
1 Cup of Table Salt
1 1/3 Cups of Water
Cookie Cutters
Decorative Object for Impression
Straw or Bamboo Stick
Ribbon or Twine
Paint (optional)

Method

• Mix all of the ingredients together in a large bowl, until you get a nice smooth ball of dough.

• Once ready, roll out to your desired thickness - be careful not to roll out too thinly, or else your
  ornaments may break or crack.

• Place your object that you are using to make an impression on the surface of your dough and roll
  over your object hard enough to get the impression into the dough. Use any style cookie cutter
  that you wish to cut out your ornaments.

• Place your finished ornaments on some baking parchment and push a straw or bamboo stick
  through the top of each ornament to create a hole for your ribbon or twine.

• Allow your ornaments to air dry for a couple of hours, turning once. You will notice a change in
  colour, as they dry white.

• After air drying, place them in the oven on very low heat of 90 degrees (fan) for about 4 hours,
  turning them every hour. Once out of the oven, allow them to air dry even more for as long
  as needed.

• Once they get to your desired dryness you can then paint them if you wish, and finally thread
  with your ribbon or twine.

Tips

We made our ornaments about 1cm thick, which in hindsight seems to have been a bit too thick.
We ended up needing to leave them in the oven for 6 hours rather than 4 and even after all of that,
they still weren't as white as they should have been. Just bear this in mind when making yours,
if you would prefer not to paint them. We finished ours with some white crafters spray paint.

Be sure to pop on over to Lauren's Closet for a peek at how theirs turned out - they used frilly
edged cutters and angel ones too, which show they really work with any style. There have also
been suggestions of adding cinnamon to the mix in her comments feed, which would obviously
give a really lovely festive scent when used at Christmas!