Valentine's Salt Dough Hearts

A few years ago when Monkey was at daycare he brought home a salt dough Christmas ornament. It is so cute and to be honest I didn't expect it to last so long, so I wanted to try out making the salt dough myself. 

Supplies: flour, salt, water, heart cookie cutters, baking tray, letter stamps, paint tray, paint brushes, pink, red, and white paint 

To make the salt dough, mix two cups of flour with one cup of salt. Originally we tried a recipe that was four cups of flour and one cup of salt and this did not work!  

Mix in one cup of water, a little at a time (you may not need the full cup). Then knead the dough with your hands until it is completely uniform. The texture will be similar to playdough. 

I had two fantastic assistants to help with these steps. 

Use a rolling pin to flatten out the dough. The thinner you make it, the less time is will take to dry. 

We used all different sizes of heart cookie cutters. 

We left most of our hearts plain and flat, but we tried to put fingerprints in some of them, and we also used letter stamps to make the kids' initials and write 'love'. 

You can dry the salt dough two ways: you can bake it at a low temperature in the oven for a few hours, or you can leave it at room temperature for a few days. I baked ours in the oven at 200F for an hour. When I took them out they seemed dry, but I stored them in a plastic baggie overnight and in the morning they were all wet again, so I would recommend two hours or more. I laid the hearts out for another 24 hours to make sure they were dry. 

We had some leftover salt dough so I put it in a plastic bag, removed as much air as I could, and stored it in the freezer. 

Once they were totally dry, I set Monkey up with the hearts and some pink, red, and white paint. 

It took a couple of coats of paint before the hearts looked finished. 

We added some magnets to the back of the hearts with a glue gun and gave them out to some loved ones. 

Happy Valentine's Day! 

Mar