How To: Salt Dough Angels

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DIY salt dough Christmas angels

When I was little, my Mom and I used to make salt dough ornaments for our Christmas tree. I made more when I went away to college, then again when I had a house and tree of my own as an adult. This year, my kids and I made more salt dough angels together. This is how we did it...

Here is a pdf file with the template we used for the cut-out portions of the angel pattern.  It includes the dress, wings and halo.  The head, legs and hands can be rolled and shaped free-form.

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First, cut out the various parts of the template.

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Then roll out your salt dough so that it's about 1/8-1/4 inch thick.  We used a proportion of 2 parts flour to 1 part salt and 1 part water.  We put parchment paper down on the table to keep things clean and make the rolling easier.

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Next, cut out the dress body, dress arms, wings and halo using a tool with a thin edge (like a butter knife).

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It's hard to be very precise when cutting out the "feather" detail on the wings, so we went back over them with a toothpick to shape them more.

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To make the angels look more 3-dimensional, we added an actual body underneath the clothes, like this.  Then we placed the dress body and sleeves on top.

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Seattle Sundries

The sleeves get folded over and a small oval ball of dough becomes the folded hands and helps hold the sleeves in place.

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Seattle Sundries

The part my kids liked doing best was adding the hair. We used a garlic press to squeeze out long strands of salt dough, then used toothpicks to shape them around the head, which is the last part to be added. It's also a good idea at this point to poke a hole or two in the place where you plan to hang a string from. We poked two holes in the halo to run string through later.

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Here's my 11 year old daughter's angel.

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And my 7 year old daughter's...

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We put them all in the oven on a low temperature (275 degrees) for 60 minutes, or so, to dry them out.

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After they are completely dry and cool, they can be painted.  It's a good idea to seal them with some sort of spray varnish after they are decorated, since this keeps additional moisture from penetrating the dough and making them soggy.

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Voila!

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Seattle Sundries

Seattle Sundries


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