Salt Dough Santa Handprint Decorations

I got the inspiration for these handprint Santa decorations from Pinterest over the weekend.  I changed mine slightly, but the ingredients is the same.  It is such a simple activity.

You will need:

1/2 a cup of salt
1/2 a cup of plain flour
1/4 of a cup of water.

Mix the salt and flour together and add water a drop at a time to make a dough.

Knead it and roll into a thick sausage and then cut into equal parts for as many children you have in your care.  I had three toddlers, so cut mine into three.

Then roll each segment out...

 

 

 

Then press each little hand into the dough to leave a handprint impression.

 

 

 

Trim around the edges of the impressions with a knife and make a hole in the top to tie ribbon.  Then place on a baking tray lined with greeseproof paper.  Place in the oven at 100°C for 3 - 4 hours. I left mine for 3 hours but they were still uncooked in the centre of the impression, so I put them on for another 30 minutes.  But when I took them out again and turned them over they were not cooked underneath, so I gave them another hour upside down to bake the underside.

 

When they were baked they looked like this...

 

 

 

I left them to cool overnight before painting in the morning.  When the paint was dry I added some glittler snow to the trim of Santa's hat and threaded some ribbon through the hole at the top to hang on the tree.