We spent an afternoon recently making salt dough shapes. For those of you who haven’t tried making salt dough yet, this is a great project to do with children. They can help with measuring, stirring, kneading, rolling, cutting out shapes, stamping and painting!

Here is our recipe for Salt Dough and some step by step instructions. We used natural ingredients to color our dough: cocoa powder for brown and turmeric for yellow.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup fine salt
• ½ to ¾ cup water
• Optional: food coloring or natural ingredients like cocoa powder, coffee, turmeric, curry or paprika. We used two tablespoons each of cocoa powder and turmeric.

First we added the flour, salt and about  a 1/2 cup of water in a bowl and stirred. Then we kneaded the dough. If the dough is too dry, add more water one tablespoon at a time. Since we were making two colors, we divided the dough in half and added the powders. Be sure to knead it well to distribute the color evenly. Fair warning, turmeric will probably leave a slightly yellow hue on your hands!

Roll out the dough. We like to roll on parchment paper so the dough doesn’t stick. Now get ready to have some fun. Use cookie cutters to make shapes and stamps to make designs.

Don’t forget to make a hole with a straw if you plan on hanging the shapes.

Bake in the oven at 200 degrees for about 2 hours or until hard, turning over once or twice. The drying time depends on the size and thickness of the pieces, so keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t brown.

Once cooled, decorate with paint, glitter or markers if you would like. You can hang these like ornaments, use them as gift tags, or even attach small magnets on the back and put them on your fridge!