Springtime salt dough flowers
With fingerprints for petals!
As the flowers bloom and the world gets brighter, we want to bring some of the colour to life inside! In this simple but beautiful craft, both you and your kids can tap into your creative sides and make some delightful decorations.
Did you know you there’s plenty of crafts you can make with wheat? After this one, try out our kid-safe slime or springtime appropriate biodegradable paper mâché seedling pots, both made with life’s simple ingredient—wheat! But for now, let’s get on to the salt dough flowers…
The core ingredients for salt dough are likely ones you already have in your pantry: flour, salt and water. You can get creative with the decoration ingredients if you prefer for your décor to be sparkly and brightly coloured, or simple with muted colours. It’s totally up to you and your little ones! For the kids, having them press their fingerprint as the flower petals lets them put their own personal mark (literally) on the craft; for you, decorate by drying and pressing flowers or use stems, rosemary or dried lavender to press into the dough.
Ingredients - Dough:
4 cups flour
1 cup salt
1½ cups water
Ingredients - Decorating:
Acrylic paint
Clear glaze spray
Cookie cutters, in flower or circle shapes
Dried, pressed flowers, stems, rosemary or dried lavender
Optional: string, glitter, or anything you’d like to make your decoration beautiful!
Instructions:
- Heat your oven to 200 degrees F.
- Combine flour, salt, and water in a large bowl and mix well. Remove from bowl and knead for up to 10 minutes—ensure to flour your kneading surface to avoid sticking.
- Roll out dough to about a ½ inch thick.
- Stamp out your shapes with the flower and circle cookie cutters.
- For fingerprint flowers: get your little ones to use their fingers to print the petal divots into the flower shapes.
- For dried flowers or herbs: press your dried flowers, rosemary or lavender into the dough prior to baking—remove before baking to fill in with paint after they bake.
- Optional: use a straw to punch out a hole at the top of your shape to thread a string and hang later.
- Bake for one to two hours. Check how dry they are (carefully) after one hour—leave them in a bit longer if they’re still a bit damp.
- When dry and cooled, break out that paint! For the fingerprint flowers, set your kids up with their favourite colours and let them paint away. Your dried flower and herb indented decorations can be painted with traditional green and their appropriate flower colour, or feel free to change it up! Once paint has dried, seal with clear glaze spray.
We hope you enjoy bringing some of the spring colours inside. Happy crafting!
Rolling out 1/2 cm seems too thin did you mean 1/2 inch?
Thanks for bringing that to our attention! I’ve updated the instructions.