Create Enchanting Gingerbread Salt Dough Decorations: Ornaments, Garland, and Wreath

Learn how to transform a simple batch of gingerbread (cinnamon) salt dough into three delightful Christmas creations. Discover the nostalgic charm of crafting whimsical ornaments, a festive garland, and an adorable wreath, all from the goodness of a batch of easy-to-make homemade gingerbread salt dough.

What Is Gingerbread Salt Dough?

Gingerbread salt dough, also known as cinnamon salt dough is a simple non-edible dough recipe used for crafts. It’s a similar recipe to my homemade playdough recipe (if you have kids make it today…so much better than the store-bought kind!!) except you add cinnamon instead of food coloring. It’s baked at a low temperature to make it rock hard.

How To Make Gingerbread Salt Dough

•The amount of cinnamon will determine how dark your gingerbread salt dough will be. For these projects, I used 1 cup of cinnamon in my dough mix.•

*My full gingerbread salt dough tutorial has the step by step pictures.*

Gingerbread Salt Dough Ornaments

You could do any shape cookie cutter for these salt dough ornaments. This time I’m only doing gingerbread men but last year I did a variety of Christmas shapes.

If you want to make a hole for adding a hanger for your ornament all you have to do is use the tip of a straw to poke a hole in the dough before you bake it.

After the ornaments were baked and cooled I used red and white permanent puffy paint to decorate them to look like a gingerbread man cookie. The tip of the puffy paint bottle makes the paint go on like icing.

To make a hanger for my gingerbread men I hot glued a red & white baker’s string onto the back of the ornament.

I just put a dollop of the glue on the back and put both ends of the cord into the glue to form a loop. I used a toothpick to push the cord down into the glue so I didn’t burn my fingers.

See, I told you these were adorable ideas…

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Simple Gingerbread Man Garland

For this quick garland, I used teeny gingerbread men. I got a two-piece cookie cutter set in the holiday baking aisle of Walmart and it’s the small cutter that I used for this project.

I painted them with red & white puffy paint and let them dry before making the garland. It did take a couple of hours for the paint to dry completely…yes, yes, I did check too early and make a dent right into one of the gingerbread men’s little faces!!

The garland I am making will hang across the top of my corner kitchen cabinet, I’m making it 3 feet long and using 7 of the mini gingerbread men.

I’m using a tan and white baker’s twine to make the gingerbread garland. (It came in a 3 pack and I found it in the Christmas wrapping paper section of Walmart…they have the cuuuutest ribbons out there right now!!)

I started in the center of my piece of twine and made a loop, then hot glued it to the back of one of the mini gingies. (use a toothpick to press the twine into the glue so you don’t burn yourself).

I used 7 of the gingerbread figures and spaced them out evenly…I left an empty length of the twine on both ends so I could hang it on my hutch.

Once the hot glue dried it was time to hang the garland up! All I did was wrap the end of the twine around a push pin and stick it into the wood at the top of the hutch.

Finished Gingerbread Garland

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Gingerbread Wreath

Saving the cutest for last! You can see my complete gingerbread salt dough wreath step-by-step to see all the pictures.

I used 2 sizes of the gingerbread cutouts to make a wreath on a 10(ish) inch Dollar Tree wreath form.

First I glued 2 of the larger gingerbread men in place and then hot glued the smaller one on top and between them.

I just love how it came out!! I think it’s one of the cutest things that I’ve ever DIY’d!! Plus it cost practically nothing to make!! Good idea for a hostess gift!!

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