Salt Dough Valentines Day Project- URGH!

Disclosure:  This is an unsponsored post.  All opinions here are my own.

I love to do projects, that is clear.  I am an avid Pinterest participant.  So of course with Valentine’s Day right around the corner I had to find something to do for the grandmother’s.  I am slightly obsessed with hand and footprints, I mean they change so quickly.  Their hands and feet will never again be the size they are right now.  It is this obsession that most of my projects for the family from the kids center around.  I wanted to do something special this year and decided on a salt dough heart.  In each half of the heart I wanted to put one of the kids footprints.  Instead of making it a stepping stone I wanted to make it a wall hanger.

BOY did this one frustrate me!  I thought that this would be easy, i’ve seen it so many times, but there is some bad information out there so I tried to weed it out for you.

Here is what I learned, and I will also include for you the links to the sites I used to create my masterpieces.

• Not all salt dough recipes are the same, some of them are different and did not work for me ( I tried 3).
• You need to poke holes in the top otherwise it will bubble and pop.
• Low and slow  is the key.. a higher temperature results in browning of the dough.
• It actually takes way longer than the sites say to harden and dry out.
• You may have to flip your piece to cook the back side.
• I used my silpat to cook it on so that it didn’t stick, when I used non-stick spray the pieces came out oily looking.
• Use your hands to shpe the dough, it looks much nicer than cutting it (my opinion).
• Tinting the dough also didn’t work so well, I painted it afterwards.
• If you are poking holes to hang, make them large and be sure it went through large on the other side.

RECIPE

1 cup of fine grain salt
2 cups of flour
1 cup of lukewarm water
Cookie Sheets
Stepping stone imprint letters, numbers and shapes
Oven at 250 for about 4 hours.

1. Once dry I painted each side twice.  I considered different colors to look like conversation hearts, but (D) decided he liked the pink and we went with it.
2. I poked the ribbon from the back to the front so that you could see the bow.
3. To personalize and also bring attention to the footprints, I used a permanent marker around the edges and wrote all of the kids’ favorite things this year.
4. On the back, I wrote their initials (always in a monogram I love monograms) and their ages.  I also had (A) trace his name on the back because that is what they are working on in preschool.

My baked project. 

Painted Pink 

The front of my completed heart.

For cards I really wanted to do something personal, but didn’t want the hastle of ordering online and waiting.  I used the Snapfish print at home cards and uploaded my picures of the kids.