How to Make Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments (That Actually Look Good)

Salt dough ornaments have been around long enough that most people associate them with the slightly lumpy, slightly grey Christmas decorations that came home from primary school in the 1990s and got hung at the back of the tree where nobody could quite see them.

They were loved. They were not beautiful.

The salt dough ornaments people are making now are a completely different thing. Smooth, stamped with botanical prints, painted in one elegant colour, strung on velvet ribbon. The kind of thing you see in a Scandinavian lifestyle shop selling for fourteen euros each, made for almost nothing in an afternoon.

Maria and I made our first proper batch two years ago. She stamped hers with every cookie cutter in the drawer and I used rosemary sprigs and the back of a fork. We painted them in the same chalky white. They look genuinely beautiful on the tree and they are the decorations people ask about most when they come to the house.

This is the full guide, including the mistakes I made the first time so you do not have to make them too.

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