We love making gifts for holidays and birthdays. These salt dough paperweights were great for preschoolers to make. After we made the dough, the preschoolers played with it before making our homemade paperweights!
Salt Dough Recipe
- 1 cup salt
- 1/2 cup water
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 2 cups flour
- optional: food coloring or liquid watercolors
If you want colored dough, add the food coloring or liquid watercolors to the water and mix it. Adding it to the water helps to make the color more uniform. If you add the color later, that’s fine, you just have to really mix it or be ok with a little bit of a marble look.
Then mix together the salt, water, and oil. Then add the flour and keep mixing. I finished mixing by hand. Our dough was a little dry, so I added a few more tablespoons of water.
Then shape the paperweight into whatever basic shape you want – we made ours round. Make sure it’s an inch or two thick. Our were about 3 inches thick. The little hands can press hard, so we like to make it nice and thick.
Grab a few different sized LEGO bricks, and get stamping! Talk about the different impressions they make depending on which side of the brick you use.
Then put them in the oven at 250. I usually do salt dough ornaments for about two hours, but we had to take this batch out after about an hour, and it turned out ok.
Once they are cool, you can wrap it up and give it as gift! It makes a fun father’s day or teacher’s gift!
Plus – more salt dough ideas:
Galaxy Salt Dough | Lemon Lime Adventures
Salt Dough Memories | Study at Home Mama
Making Salt Dough Fossils to Awesome Music | Witty Hoots
Nature Inspired Dough for Lively Sensory Play | Peakle Pie
Crayon Salt Dough Recipe | Sugar Aunts
Scented Salt Dough Pendants | Raising Lifelong Learners
Salt Dough Seashells | Creative World of Varya
Microwave Salt Dough | In The Playroom
Nature Printing with Salt Dough | Squiggles and Bubbles