Ornament Dough

This recipe was fantastic to work with. This was my first time attempting Dough art and I was just so pleased with how the dough baked so evenly and flat. Thank you Darlene for sharing this recipe. It will now become our family tradition to make yearly ornaments. I made about 10 Halloween magnets and hanging ornaments and about 15 Christmas magnets and hanging ornaments and I had a ball and I am a grown woman. LOL I loved this dough, now if only I could get my edible cookies to cook this perfectly! Thanks again Darlene.

The ornaments after baking at 300 for 30 minutes were still doughy. I had to re-bake them for 40 minutes the next day. After they finally hardened, they turned out nice.

I had much sucess with this receipe. I mixed all the ingredients in my Mix Master and then hand kneaded it into a ball before rolling and cutting out with cutters. Smooth the edges of your cut outs before baking as they will not smooth out as with cookies. Great reciepe!

A few of my ornaments still puffed. I think the key is to use warm water (I seem to remember this from my own childhood) and do a lot of kneading to make sure the gluten in the flour has a workout before cutting or baking. The ones rolled thinnest did not puff. Oh and you must roll S-L-O-W (it's more of a stretching, like a pizza dough) to avoid cracks.

This is a great recipe/project. It's easy, only uses a few ingredients that are already in most households anyway, the cookies don't puff out or lose their shape while baking, and they bake fast (30 minutes at 300 degrees was fine for me too). This recipemade 30-some ornaments for me, not the 12 stated. It depends what size cut-outs/ornaments you make, that's all. And acrylic paints and interior/exterior glaze/finish work just fine. I'm definitely adding this recipe to my scrapbook.

This dough may have worked fine if I was only making Christmas ornaments. Instead I was making a craft/present with my children. Without enough time (or money for that matter) to go to the hobby store and buy clay we hoped that an ornament dough would suit our purposes. We tried to shape some sculptures which the kids would then paint for Dad's birthday. The dough was much too crumbly, and also had a rough texture (from hardening particles) after being in use just 15-30 minutes. I added a couple tablespoons of oil to smooth it out and melt away some of the crusty stuff. The dough was still difficult to work with. Even if I was making ornaments the dought would have been very tough to roll out and keep it sticking together at the same time. I could make one large shape, but I couldn't make say two round balls and then get them to stick to each other. Also, during baking I had problems with lots of cracking. I had to bake tour sculptures (about 1-2" thick) for extra time because they were thick and 3-D (not flat like the cookie cutter ornaments) so by the time the inner core was solid perhaps the extra time had dried the outside too much. Also, the sculptures seemed pretty brittle. Because we painted and varnished them we added some strength, but one that dropped on the wood floor did shatter anyway. So, if you are hoping to use this as a craft dough, we would recommend trying something different.

My three children and I made this recipe and had a great time. There is very little mess and cleans up great. Thanks for sharing the recipe.

LOVED THIS RECIPE! I added to it 1 bottle of cheap cinnamon and some nutmeg. They smelled delicous and the dough was very plyable. The smell last about a week. Tip bake for longer than stated at 15 to 20 minutes to time stated. Can even do more time in oven ornaments will not be damaged.

Found this recipe in 2002 and have been making ornaments with it ever since. The kids love the tradition of not only painting the ornaments but making them with this easy recipe too!

It was so fun making these with the kids. I did have to add a little more water to the dough. It may have been because I halved the recipe, not sure though. We made way more ornaments then the recipe stated so be sure to adjust cooking time because ours burnt a bit.