Hello! It's Mrs M here.... I know Christmas day has been and gone, but in our house it's Christmas until New Years Day... a week before Christmas we had a 'craft week' and this is one of the things we made.
One of my oldest and favourite Christmas memories from my childhood is one that involves crafting.... I remember my Mom’s sister coming over with some Partner’s bags, pulling out some gold and silver sheets of card, and us sitting around my Mom’s kitchen table making Angel’s by rolling the card into cones and sticking a ball on the top to form a head.
Since then I’ve always made things at Christmas, stockings for my family, advent calanders, photo albums, decorations, baubles, cushions with embroidered messages, giraffes as gifts and nativity outfits.
I was reading online about different doughs you can make, having made salt dough when Seth was little but hating the texture ( it's so rough and grainy) and so I thought I’d share the ones we made on Sunday. ( Apparently the recipe is abit hit and miss, and I have realised that I put too much cornflour on the board I rolled it on and it’s made them alittle bit crumbly. So note to yourself, don’t use too much!
Opeie absolutely loved making these, and he’s really been getting into the ceramics spirit lately with his Play doh antics and this was even more exciting because it was really silky smooth and soft.
1 ) English people aren't used to using 'cups' when measuring, but i litterally grabbed a cup from the side and used it to measure out:
1/2 cup corn flour
1 cup bakingpowder
3/4 cup tepid /room temp water
To Make the Clay:
2) Put a ring on the stove on low heat.
Using a cup measure out the dry ingredients and put in a sauce pan, and mix together, then add the water and it will look alittle odd, and kind of fizzy. keep stirring until your mix isn't sticking to the pan too much... ( I ended up adding a couple of drops of extra water as my mixture was alittle thick)
3) When it's able to stick together in a ball take off the heat (it looks abit like dough)
4) transfer to a dry clean bowl. And 5) Cover with a damp cloth until it cools down
6) When it's cooled put on a flat surface covered in alittle cornflour and knead and stretch it out like you would making bread, until it's not sticky, add alittle cornflour if you need to, but be aware it goes crumbly if you add too much when it dries. ( - It will still be ok if this happens though!)
--It will keep fine in the fridge for a
couple of weeks if you don't want to use it straight away. Leave it to get to room temperature before you
use it however --
With a dry rolling pin roll out the dough and use cutters to cut shapes out of the dough. Get a straw and poke through where you want the ribbon to go through and hang and get your little ones to blow the clay out of the end of the straw for fun!
Place on baking paper on a oven tray if baking, if not make sure you Turn them every day or so to stop the sides curing/ splitting.... ( I think I would do this next time rather than oven baking to see what it's like in comparison)
Preheat oven to 160 if fan assisted/ 175 is not.Turn them half way through, they need to cook for approx 30 mins.
When cool and dry put ribbon through the centre of the hole, and either leave white, coat in PVA glue and add glitter for a shiny look or paint for a colourful christmassy feel.
It's a really fun, easy, fool proof way to make Christmas decorations you'll treasure forever....
We are also going to do some with Opeie and Seth's hand prints at some stage or possibly footprints if Opeie will let us!
Next time , as i said i'd leave them to air dry as they went crisp in the oven due to me adding too much cornflour on the board.
