DIY New Year's toys made from salt dough. Cute crafts from salt dough: ideas and master classes

Salt dough is the simplest, most environmentally friendly and affordable material for children's crafts. Today we will tell you how to make a snowman from such dough and what other New Year's crafts from salt dough you can make with your child.

The long-awaited New Year is coming soon. Preparations for this wonderful holiday always begin about a month before it, or even earlier. Children especially love preparing for the New Year holidays. They are happy to take part in making New Year's decorations for the home. So that you do not worry about the safety of materials for children's crafts, prepare salt dough and let your child make his own New Year's toys.

Children's New Year's crafts made from salt dough can become not only a wonderful decoration for your apartment for the holiday, but also a nice gift for family and friends.

How to make salt dough: recipe

The recipe for salted play dough is incredibly simple, the main thing is to maintain the proportions and mix well. You'll need:

1 cup flour
0.5 cups salt (non-iodized)
125 ml water

You need to mix water into the dough gradually, achieving a uniform, smooth mass. For large and bulky crafts, it is better to take 2 cups of salt, without changing the amount of flour and water. You can store the finished salt dough in the refrigerator, be sure to wrap it in a bag.

Master class on how to make a snowman from salt dough for the New Year

A New Year's snowman made from salt dough, which a child can make with his own hands with just a little help from you, will be a wonderful Christmas tree decoration, a holiday gift or a favorite toy.

For a children's craft for the New Year "Snowman" you will need:

blue gouache
spadefoot
toothpick
acrylic lacquer

1. Prepare salt dough from water, flour and salt. Divide the play dough into two parts: larger and smaller. The smaller part of the dough needs to be painted blue using gouache.

2. Now you can start making a snowman with your own hands: from white dough you need to make two cakes of different sizes for the body and head of the snowman. As soon as you have sculpted the head, immediately form the mouth and eyes using a toothpick. Now attach the arms and legs.

3. Make a hat of the desired shape from blue dough; you can apply a design with a toothpick. Next, roll out a rectangle of blue dough - this will be a scarf, make the desired pattern on it. Next, make the buttons.

4. Insert a toothpick into the snowman’s hand - this is the base of the broom. You need to squeeze out a little blue dough through the garlic press, shape it into a broom, let it dry a little, and then put it on a toothpick.

Do you know that New Year is just around the corner? Today it seems that it’s still autumn on the calendar, and you’ll have time to do everything, but tomorrow - bang-bang! - and winter has come, and time is running out. Yes, yes, it's time to hurry if you want to decorate the Christmas tree this year New Year's toys made from salt dough! This is a completely affordable project that is 100% family friendly and matches your DIY skills perfectly. Well, seriously - all the necessary materials can be found at home (and if not, then most likely we will talk about paints, but you can buy them at the nearest stall, and if a package of gouache or a couple of tubes of acrylic is not currently included in your financial plans, you can refuse altogether from painting toys and making them in such a distinct eco-style), and even a child can roll out the dough and cut circles out of it with a glass (yeah, don’t want circles? That means your handicraft skills have stepped a little beyond the level of a novice pithecanthropus, and you’re quite you will be able to create New Year's miracles at the advanced level).

In general, less words, more action: - the most complete step-by-step guide with photographic evidence, go to the cut and study carefully. Also join New Year's marathon "Handicraft Runet" VKontakte and show your finished toys on topic of a partner. Waiting for you!

Step 1 - dough

There is nothing complicated, the main rule is intuition. And even if the word “approximately” doesn’t scare you, everything will work out.

Let's start with the fact that there are trainloads of recipes on the Internet. And all the very best, of course - the best, tested, accurate and generally practically guarantee that New Year's toys from salt dough will be made on their own, dry and jump onto the Christmas tree. We urge you to believe everyone, but do it your own way - listening to your intuition. We tell and show in pictures.

Need to:

1/2 cup fine salt "Extra";

1/2 glass of water;

1 tbsp. l. vegetable oil;

approximately 2.5 cups flour.

We measure out the salt. Many sources write that this should be the most ordinary small “Extra” and definitely not iodized-fluoridated. Yeah, that's right. But the author of the master class does not have non-iodized salt at home and, as you understand, her common sense does not allow her to leave the house in the nasty frost and disgusting slush to find non-iodized salt in the thirty-eighth supermarket. Believe me, for some reason it works with the one you have at hand.

Yes, for the haters of such a measure of volume as half a glass, let us clarify: we weighed it, it turned out that salt was exactly 170 g.

If you don't have a food processor, you're out of luck - you'll have to play with your hands. Pour salt into the bowl in which you usually knead the dough for dumplings. If you are using a food processor, pour it into the food processor bowl.

We measure out the water. Yes, yes, half a glass. Happened 130 g water.

Gurgling - to the salt, let them be friends.

Vegetable oil - to the same company. By the way, you can get by - if you are greedy and don’t want to transfer precious olive oil to some kind of New Year’s toys, but you never had cheap industrial palm and rapeseed oil at home, don’t add it at all. The oil is needed so that the dough is a little more elastic than it would be without oil, that's all. By the way, if you suddenly feel the urge to show miracles of unprecedented generosity and pour half a glass of butter into the dough at once (why waste time on trifles, we measure everything out in glasses!), we warn you: this dough will have to dry until the next New Year. So you better be greedy. Or remember the golden mean and add a spoon, just one tablespoon of oil.

Now it's time to turn on your intuition. Add flour. We immediately measure the glass (the scales said that it turned out 160 g flour).

And into his water, straight into salt water.

Stir - you get thick, thick sour cream. You can't fashion anything out of it! The photo is a little unclear, but the meaning is 100% clear - there is not enough flour, you don’t have to be a professor of salty toy business to understand this.

Therefore, feel free to add another full spoonful of flour ( plus 20 g flour).

Mix. It’s okay, it already looks like something.

But in essence, it’s not enough: the dough sticks to your hands and its appearance speaks of your personal unwillingness to turn into Christmas tree decorations.

Add another spoon ( plus 20 g flour).

Oh, this is already beautiful - the dough has gathered into a ball, nothing sticks to the walls.

We check - everything is in perfect order in our hands too.

Well, almost completely - still, some tiny particles still stick to your hands, so you can play it safe and add another teaspoon of the dry ingredient (plus 5 g of flour). Extremely intuitive.

By the way, the longer you knead, the better the gluten of the flour will develop and the easier it will be to work with the dough - so let the processor work, it won’t hurt.

We check with our fingers - nothing sticks at all, the indentations in the dough do not blur, the dimples “hold” their shape. It’s worth stopping at this point - excess flour will negatively affect the products, they will crumble, such dough is very, very nasty and difficult to work with.

Last test just in case - everything is fine.

Next is a proprietary secret: take a lump of dough and throw it forcefully on the table. Collect again into a ball and throw again. Once again. And so on - until you get tired of it, but at least 10-15 times - this way you will make it homogeneous, more elastic, pleasant and smooth.

That's it, you can wrap it in a bag so that the dough does not dry out while you prepare for the second stage.

By the way, many sources say that the dough needs to rest, they suggest wrapping it in three rolls of cling film and hiding it in the refrigerator for at least a day, or better yet, for almost a month. Liars! No, of course, nothing bad will happen if you have a week left and you let the test rest, but if you feel the urge to work with it right now, if you can’t deny your inspiration, then there’s no need - let’s do it right away !

Step 2 - cutting out the figures

This is perhaps the most interesting stage of work - creative, imaginative, “pure” and simple.

You can go three ways.

The first is not to cut out figures from salt dough, but to sculpt them - remembering school labor lessons or Roni Oren’s books, puffing and trying. In general, this is a very worthwhile and interesting option, but on one condition: if the level of your skills is such that, if you are going to sculpt an elephant, you at least get a cat, and not, waving a crooked hatchet, claim that this is actually a sleigh Santa Claus, then, of course, you can try.

The second is to print from the Internet or draw yourself templates of flat New Year's toys (Christmas balls, Santa Claus's bag, bells, jingles, stars, icicles), and then, following solely the call of love for art, apply the templates to the dough, carefully and almost jewelry-cut them out with using a knife, making sure to be especially careful when turning: one awkward movement -

The third is not to reinvent the wheel and not to discover America, but to simply take cookie cutters and cutters for working with mastic and, using their help, cut out something simple, accessible and thematic. If you have a special passion for creativity, you should reassure yourself with the hope that your needs will be fully realized at the stage of painting and painting.

So, place a small piece of dough (we hide the rest in a bag, don’t relax) on a lightly floured surface.

We roll it out as we want, the main thing is evenly, while remembering that the thicker the toy is, the longer it will take to dry. The optimal size is 3 mm: it won’t break, but it will dry quickly.

Of course, not themselves: the use of child labor at this stage is welcomed and encouraged in every possible way. Mom needs to drink coffee sometime!

With a properly organized labor process, everything will be done quickly and efficiently.

Don’t forget to immediately make holes for future strings that will help hang the toys from the tree.

Or a lot of holes - for reliability: so that there is definitely something to cling to.

Please note that some cookie cutters leave “rags” on the cut - if they are thin and small, there is no need to remove them; they will fall off during the drying process, but if they are thicker, then it is better to spend another five minutes and carefully cut everything off.

Yield of products from the specified proportions.

Step 3 - drying

But here you have to slow down. If you want to cope with the task of making New Year's toys from salt dough in one day, you need to dry the products in the oven at a minimum temperature. Depending on the thickness of the toys, you will need 3-7 hours - put everything on a baking sheet, turn on the oven at 50-70 degrees, do not forget about the fan and wait, periodically opening the door slightly to “release” the moisture and occasionally turning the figures from side to side.

You can take a simpler route - lay out the toys on a sheet of parchment paper and leave them alone for several days. Depending on the room temperature, you will need 3-5 days for the salt dough figures to dry completely. Once a day they need to be turned over to the other side - you will see how the color of the toy will change during the drying process: the wet spot in the middle will be yellower than the white dried edges.

Do not try to speed up the drying process of toys - they will either burn (yes, this is possible!) or become severely deformed. Be patient, go for a walk, work out your abs, make homemade marshmallows - in general, anything, just not to rush things.

Well-dried products are uniform in color, do not wrinkle or bend, are light and pleasant.

Step 4 - painting and decorating

Do I need to tell you something? Take acrylic, gouache or even watercolor, contours and varnishes, multi-colored rhinestones and beads, brushes and sticks, toothpicks and cotton pads, forks and felt-tip pens, pencils and needles - everything that can be used for drawing in one way or another.

And draw. Paint it. Create. Decorate. Get creative. Create. Gush out. Create. All in your hands.

It is convenient to immediately hang painted toys on all protruding parts of the house to dry.

And the final decoration is done after the first layer of paint has dried.

A very wonderful product - spray paint: quick and easy. Lays down smoothly, dries instantly, labor costs are minimal.

Children's creativity - it is so... childish and beautiful!

Salt dough figurines can be used as Christmas tree decorations, as decor for self-wrapped gifts, and as figurines for other projects - for example, advent calendars.

Most people associate this holiday with magic and fun. Decorating the New Year tree in many apartments turns into a real ritual in which all family members take part, including the smallest members of the household. To make it more interesting for kids to prepare for the holiday, you can offer them to make New Year's toys from salt dough with their own hands. Such jewelry will look original on the forest beauty and, most importantly, they will be completely unique. It’s best to create toys with the whole family - this is a great way to have fun and usefully spend your free time, introducing the younger generation to creativity.

Methods for preparing salt dough

To make your Christmas tree decorations beautiful and durable, you need to make the dough for them correctly. There are several options for preparing it. For the first method you will need:

flour - 1 glass;
salt - 1 glass;
vegetable oil - 1 tablespoon;
cold water - about 125 ml (its volume depends on the quality of flour).

The dough is kneaded from the prepared ingredients. It should turn out elastic and plastic. The resulting dough is covered with cellophane and placed in the refrigerator for at least 3 hours. After this, it can be used to make Christmas tree decorations.

There is another recipe for making salt dough. New Year's toys made from this material will be more durable. For this you need to prepare:

flour - 1 glass;
salt - 2/3 cup;
PVA glue - about 15 ml;
cold water - 100 ml.

The dough, as in the first version, after mixing all the components should be quite elastic and retain its shape perfectly. Water should be mixed into the mass in small portions, making sure that it does not turn out to be too thin. Salted dough prepared using this method hardens quickly, so it must be used immediately after kneading.

Necessary tools and decorative elements

To make New Year's toys from salt dough with your own hands with your baby, in addition to the raw materials itself, you will need to prepare a convenient wooden board on which the entire creative process will take place. You will also need a rolling pin, a plastic knife for plasticine, shaped molds, acrylic paints and several brushes of different thicknesses. To decorate crafts, you can use everything you can find in the house (for example, beads, beads, sparkles or rain).

Toy making process

Having prepared everything you need, you and your child can start creating masterpieces from dough. The easiest way is to make flat figures using molds. These can be stars, hearts, Christmas trees, angels, outlines of various animals, etc. To make such toys, you need to roll out the dough on a board (it should be 0.6 to 1.5 cm thick), and then use prepared molds to cut out different figures from it. The more crafts you get, the better. Since the toys will be hung on the Christmas tree, you need to remember to make holes in them (for these purposes it is most convenient to use a toothpick or a match).

The finished figures are dried for one hour in an oven heated to 80 degrees, or on a hot radiator. You can let the tree decorations dry on their own by laying them out on a piece of parchment paper and leaving them on the table, but this will take a few days for them to harden.

If there are no molds in the house, there is no need to despair. Funny New Year's figures can be cut out from rolled out dough using a regular plasticine knife. In all other respects, the process of their manufacture is no different from the method described above.

Decorating figurines

New Year's toys made from salt dough should be painted after they are completely dry. You can cover them with one or more colors and draw funny faces and patterns on them. To ensure that beads, buttons, bows and other decorative elements adhere firmly to the products, it is best to attach them to the surface using PVA glue. When the paint and glue on the toys are dry, colored ribbons are threaded through them. Unusual and very beautiful handmade New Year's decorations are ready. You can hang them on the Christmas tree with your child.

Important nuances

There is nothing simpler than homemade New Year's toys from salt dough. The photos of Christmas tree decorations presented in this article are only a small part of what can be made from this plastic material. Modeling toys, like any other type of creativity, requires imagination. Salt dough is a universal material, and you can use it to create Christmas tree figures of any complexity. However, it is worth remembering that they should not be too thin or too thick, because in the first case the products will turn out fragile and quickly break, and in the second they will turn out to be heavy and will pull the spruce branches down.

New Year is a wonderful time and the best time to enjoy communication with family and children. Kids love New Year's crafts and homemade Christmas tree decorations. Fiddling with dough is also one of children's favorite pastimes. By combining both, you can decorate the Christmas tree with wonderful unique toys.

In this article:

You will need:

1 part fine table salt;
1 part white table flour;
1/3 part potato starch;
water for kneading.

All dry ingredients need to be mixed in a bowl and knead the mass, gradually pouring water. The mass should have a pleasant consistency - not stick to your hands, and not be too tight (do not break or crumble).

After the salt dough is ready, decide when you will paint the products. You can paint the mass immediately, or you can paint the toys after baking.

How to dry New Year's crafts?

A few words about drying. To make the dough hard, you can simply wait a few days, or bake it in the oven. You need to preheat the oven to maximum temperature, then place the salted crafts laid out on a baking sheet. Then you need to turn off the oven and do not open it until it has cooled completely. You can bake them over very low heat (like crackers), but then you have to make sure they don’t burn. Another little secret - to prevent the figures from sticking, cover the baking sheet with a baking sleeve.

Of course, not all salt dough crafts can be dried in the oven. For example, those decorated with beads or beads should be dried naturally.

How to paint the finished product?

There are several ways to make products multi-colored. Dry cosmetic pigments and water-soluble food coloring, which are used to make handmade soap, are best suited for this. If they are not available, then you can use Gouache or watercolor paints.

After the salt dough is colored, you need to carefully roll it out with a rolling pin and cut out the desired shapes using molds. Products made from dough of different colors look very interesting (as in the picture). Kids have a lot of fun doing this kind of mixing.

Another way is to make crafts from white dough and then decorate them - there are many ways. Kids will do this with gouache, older children can draw beautiful patterns with felt-tip pens or a gel pen.

Acrylic paints are a great decoration! If you use silver paint to decorate crafts, they will look like! Paints with shiny pigments look very good!

Decor ideas

In addition to coloring, there are many ways to decorate future toys. Just do this before you dry them. For example, cut out different holes with a straw.

Or make prints and imprints with stamps or some kind of figures.

Decorate with beads, beads or sparkles!

Dough crafts decorated with cosmetic glitter look very festive! You need to cover the dry finished product with PVA glue and then cover it with glitter. You can buy them at any nail fashion store, they cost from 60 to 120 rubles.

Crafts made from salt dough: New Year's crafts, Christmas tree toys

Salt dough is a popular and affordable material for children's creativity and making their own crafts. Just like plasticine, salt dough can be used to make products of any level of complexity, so children of any age can make crafts from salt dough. The recipe for making salted play dough is very simple; the ingredients for it can be found in every home.

Salt dough recipe. How to make salt dough

You will need:

Flour - 2 cups
- salt - 1 glass
- water - 250 gr.

You need regular wheat flour, without raising agents, dyes or other additives. Salt - "Extra". The water is ordinary cold.

How to make salt dough: mix flour and salt, add water, knead the dough. The degree of readiness of the salt dough can only be determined by hand. If the dough crumbles, add water. If, on the contrary, it stretches too well and sticks to your hands, then there is too much water, and you need to add a little flour. Roll into a ball and make several indentations in it with your finger. If the dough does not spread and holds its shape, it is ready. It is recommended to add vegetable oil during the kneading process. Now the dough will not stick to your hands, dry out quickly and become crusty while working. However, it should be remembered that the best is the enemy of the good! If there is a lot of oil, the dough will get dirty, and final drying can take a very long time. For our recipe, a couple of tablespoons is enough.

Well, the dough is ready, now you can proceed directly to the process of modeling salt dough.

New Year's crafts made from salt dough. Christmas tree toys made from salt dough

In this article we will tell you how to make New Year's crafts and Christmas tree decorations from salt dough. We tried to select crafts made from salt dough that, on the one hand, are easy to make, and on the other hand, the end result is beautiful.

Salty dough. Crafts made from salt dough

To make Christmas tree decorations from salt dough, you will need shaped cookie cutters. With their help, even a child can cut out figures from a rolled out sheet of dough.

The resulting salt dough figures can be left as is, but it’s even better to decorate them. For example, like this.

You can use a cocktail tube to make many holes in the dough and then you will get openwork figures.

Or decorate crafts made from salt dough with beads. Just keep in mind that if you use beads made of plastic, etc., then you cannot dry the finished salt dough products in the oven, otherwise the beads may melt.

Instead of beads, you can use various cereals, shells, buttons and even broken dishes to decorate New Year's crafts made from salt dough.

You can give Christmas tree decorations made from salt dough a festive look with the help of beautiful ribbons and threads.

Note: if you do not have a suitable mold, you can cut out a stencil from cardboard and use it to cut the salt dough for the craft.

Modeling from salt dough. Salt dough photo

Finished, already dried salt dough products can be decorated with sparkles by applying them to a layer of glue.

Crafts made from salt dough. Salt dough master class

Christmas decorations made from salt dough, painted using colored permanent markers, look beautiful.

Products made from salt dough. Salt dough modeling

You can decorate New Year's crafts made from salt dough using the decoupage technique, pasting them with beautiful pictures or decals. For decoupage, you can use pictures cut out from New Year's napkins. For New Year's decoupage, regular PVA glue diluted with water in a 1:1 ratio is suitable. Cut out pictures or patterns from New Year's napkins, separate the top layer and paste it onto the finished salt dough craft. Apply another layer of glue on top.

Figures made from salt dough. Crafts made from salt dough

Here are some more examples of decorating salt dough figures.

Christmas tree decorations made from salt dough. Salt dough modeling

A simple and original way to decorate salt dough products is to make prints on them. Prints can be made from all sorts of objects with interesting textures that you can find around your home.

The salt dough craft “Fish” in the photo below was made using various textured items that the author of the craft found at home. For a detailed master class on making this original craft from salt dough, see the link

Natural materials are also suitable for making Christmas tree decorations with your own hands from salt dough: twigs, shells, leaves with thick veins.

When making New Year's crafts from salt dough with your children, you can use purchased stamps for children's creativity. The ink is suitable for both black and colored.

The DIY Christmas tree decorations stars, house and cockerel in the photo below are also made from salt dough using patterned stamps. By the way, you can make stamps for children’s creativity yourself. Read about how to make stamps with your own hands on our website in a special article.

An interesting way to make New Year's decorations from salt dough is offered by the Ladybirds in my garden website. Using textile or paper lace, openwork prints are created on salt dough, from which figures are then cut out using shaped molds or a simple glass.

Christmas tree decorations made from salt dough with prints of children's hands or feet look touching. On the back of the salt dough craft, write the date the print was made.

From fingerprints and palm prints on salt dough you can make these memorable Christmas tree decorations with your own hands: a New Year tree and Santa Claus.

Crafts made from salt dough. Salt dough figurines

Concluding our review article on the topic “New Year’s crafts from salt dough”, here are a few more interesting New Year’s crafts that can be made from both salt dough and plasticine.

1. New Year's mosaic made of beads and bugles

To make this original New Year's decoration, you will need:

Plasticine or salt dough
- plastic covers
- beads, beads
- gold paint (optional)

Paint the lids with gold paint, then fill them with plasticine or salt dough, and lay a mosaic of beads and bugles on top. Even kids can make such New Year's crafts.

2. DIY craft for the New Year “New Year’s candles”

To make this New Year's craft you will need:

Salt dough or plasticine
- cardboard base from a toilet paper roll
- corrugated paper in red, yellow and orange colors

Make rings from plasticine or salt dough of different colors, then put them on a cardboard roll. Make a flame from corrugated paper and insert it inside the candle.

3. New Year's craft for children "Christmas tree"

You can make a cute Christmas tree from cardboard packaging of milk, kefir or juice and plasticine (salt dough). For a master class on making this craft from salt dough, see the photo below.