reindeer – Page 2 – A Smith of All Trades

Our main craft from last weekend’s craft night was salt dough ornaments. Carrie, Amy and I followed an east recipe for the dough so we could make our own ornaments.

All you need for the dough is 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of salt and 1/2 cup of warm water. I mixed ours together in my KitchenAid using the dough hook attachment, which worked great. When the dough was a little too tacky to roll out, I added a pinch more flour.

Then we set up these awesome SilPat mats and began to roll our dough.

When the dough was an even thickness, we stamped our shapes into it. Then, we removed the excess dough and put a hole in the top of each one before putting them into the oven.

I started to bake the ornaments at 200 degrees, but after a while I bumped up the temperature to 250. That worked great and the ornaments hardened in about 2 hours.

Once they cooled down, I hung them on our tree using silver and red string.

Here’s one for Remmy!

And a little tree for our big, fat tree.

I saved a few to paint, but I haven’t gotten around to adding color to any of them yet. I don’t think they need it either. They look very pretty on our tree just as they are.

Do you and your family make Christmas cookies every year? We do — in fact, it’s a big to-do in our family. We set aside an entire day dedicated to making our famous sugar cookies before our extended family joins us for the holidays.

Last year, we went through our cookie cutters to weed out the ones we never use, and my mom pulled out a set that used to be her mom’s. We never use them because they are a bit of a pain to use, but she didn’t want to throw them away. So, she gave them to me to make Christmas artwork for her. I turned them into a pretty and festive framed piece of art that she displays in her kitchen — how perfect!

To make the frame, I bought a ruby-red fabric with gold diamonds on it, as well as some spray adhesive. I also grabbed a shadow box frame since the cookie cutters aren’t flat.

I sprayed the adhesive onto the black insert that came with the frame and tightly wrapped the fabric around the edges. I trimmed off the excess and let it dry. Don’t go overboard on the spray glue because it can seep through your fabric.

Once the fabric was secure, I figured out how I wanted to space my cookie cutters, then started to glue. The cookie cutters were hollow(ish) on the inside, so I had to glue something inside of them so the glue could reach the fabric. For one, I glued crumpled up paper, which worked great. For the remaining ones, I glued small magnets. Those also did the trick.

With the cookie cutters ready to be added, I piled up hot glue on top of the paper/magnets, then carefully placed them onto my fabric-covered cardboard.

After I had all four glued on, I wanted to add a little something extra. I had ribbon that matched the fabric perfectly, so I tied four bows to add to the frame.

Once they were all about equal size, I glued them onto each of the cookie cutters.

Then, I popped the cardboard back into the frame and secured the back. Voila!

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