Marble Salt Dough Ornaments

With Christmas right around the corner, we've got a simple and fun last minute DIY gift that you can give away to your friends, family, and coworkers. We took a simple salt dough ornament and dipped it in nail polish to create a marble effect. You can easily customize what colors you want to marble your ornaments in as well as the shape of your ornaments by using various cookie cutters.

• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup salt
• 1/2 cup water
• Rolling pin
• Cookie cutters
• Baking sheet
• Oven
• Straw
• Nail polish in various colors
• A bin or container you can ruin
• Towel/cardboard to place ornaments on

1. Start by making the salt dough. For this you will mix together the flour, salt and water until it forms a dough. Note: we halved the recipe here as it seemed to make a lot a lot of ornaments with a full cup of flour but if you have a big party I would recommend to double our recipe.
2. Once the salt dough is ready sprinkle some flour on a work surface and some on your rolling pin and roll out your dough. We rolled ours to about 1/4 inch thickness but you can keep yours as thick or as thin as you like. It is definitely easier to cut out the shapes with a slightly thicker dough, though.
3. Start cutting out your shapes with cookie cutters and place on a baking sheet. Taking a straw place a hole in the salt dough where you want it to hang.
4. Once all your ornaments are cut out place them on a baking sheet and pop them into the oven at 200°F for 2-3 hours. Note: you are basically drying out the dough so this takes a while. I think mine were in the oven for about 2.5 hours. Alternatively you could leave them out to air dry but this would take a really long time.

I highly suggest doing this outside.

1. Get a bin or container you can ruin and fill it with room temperature water. Have your nail polish open and ready as well as your ornaments easily reachable because once you pour the nail polish you will have to work quickly. Lay out a towel/rag for the ornaments to dry on after you dip them in the nail polish.
2. Gently pour the color or colors of nail polish you want to use into your bin. If you want a thick marble effect use more nail polish but if you want it thinner then only pour a small amount of nail polish.
3. Quickly take your ornament and dip it into the water face down and pull it out. If you are unhappy with how the marble came out you can always dip it in the water again. Let dry on your towel/rag. If you still have a good amount of nail polish in your water quickly dip another ornament in, otherwise pour more nail polish and repeat the process.
4. Since you basically had to dry out the salt dough and now got it wet again you will have to let it sit out in a dry environment for about 24 hours.

Take a piece of ribbon or string and tie it through the hole in the ornament. Hang up on your tree or wrap up nicely to give away as a gift!

Let us know in the comments below if you tried making these marble salt dough ornaments! Merry Christmas!