Learn how to make these marble salt dough ornaments to decorate your tree this year!

One of my absolute favorite things to do during the holidays is to decorate the Christmas tree. I love pulling out each of our carefully wrapped ornaments and remembering different stories about them. Sometimes the story is as simple as I remember picking that up at Target with my friend (Target has the best ornaments, fyi). Sometimes you pull out an ornament and laugh and remember the time when your dog stole it off the tree and ate half of its leg or ear (this is a lot of our ornaments).

But the best stories are when you stumble across an ornament that you made yourself. Most of mine are from when I was 5 years old and it is just a giant piece of cardboard with my hand print painted on it. Talented as I was back then I think my ornament DIY game has stepped up a bit.

Today we are sharing marble salt dough ornaments to create fun holiday memories for years to come as you pull them out next year or the year after to decorate your Christmas tree. Maybe one will have a missing limb from a large dog that eats everything (several of mine already do). Maybe one will be the one your little sibling made and they will be able to remember it when they are older.

Either way, these marble salt dough ornaments are simple to make and involve ingredients you should already have at home. If you enjoy marbling with nail polish you should definitely give this craft a go. We’ve been known to marble a few things before so we thought it might be fun for Christmas to take simple salt dough ornaments to the next level.

Materials:

• 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/rag
• Ribbon

Making the salt dough ornaments:

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 or drawing your own using a knife. We made some letter ornaments by just gently cutting into the dough with a knife – this was a bit difficult on curvier letters so I would recommend getting a stencil if you want them to look nice.
4. Place your ornament on a baking sheet and using the tip of a straw, poke a hole into where you want it to hang.
5. Once all your ornaments are cut out 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.

Marbling the salt dough ornaments:

1. I highly suggest doing this outside. Get a bin or container you can ruin and fill it with room temperature water.
2. 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.
3. Lay out a towel/rag for the ornaments to dry on after you dip them in the nail polish.
4. 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.
5. 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.
   

   

   
6. Let dry on your towel/rag.
7. 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.
8. 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.
9. Take a ribbon and loop it through the hole to hang up your ornament.

Now you have plenty of marble salt dough ornaments that you can pull out next year and remember when you made them. These salt dough ornaments would also make wonderful gifts to give to your friends and family.

Let us know in the comments below if you have any favorite ornaments or holiday traditions!