I’ll show you how I turned one batch of gingerbread (cinnamon) salt dough into 3 different adorable Christmas ideas.
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
- 2 cup flour
- 1 cup salt
- ½ to 1 cup cinnamon (I bought the cheapest one at Walmart)
- 1½ cups very hot water
•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.•
Mix the dry ingredients together, then pour the hot water in and stir well. Knead the dough until it is thoroughly combined and smooth.
Roll out dough until ¼ inch thick, I rolled it out on a silicone baking mat, you could do it on a floured surface so the dough doesn’t stick.
I used 3 different-sized gingerbread man cookie cutters for these projects and 1 batch of the gingerbread salt dough.
Bake your cutouts for 2 hours in a 250° oven, flip after 1 hour. The dough should be hard.
My full gingerbread salt dough tutorial has the step by step pictures.
1. 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 cord 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…
2. 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 is going to hang across the top of my corner kitchen hutch, 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
3. 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!!
Even More Christmas Inspiration!
Wishing you a wonderful holiday season!!
-Jennifer
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