Happy Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day from The Eco Chic & Family!  

Thanks to an inspiring post a few days ago over at Green & Clean Mom I decided to do a little crafting with my kids this week and make some Valentine’s Day gifts.  We love playing with clay and dough but we’ve never tried making our own salt dough.

Our salt dough recipe (for a small batch):

1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
water (add a little at a time)

Directions: Mix the flour and salt in a bowl and slowly add water until you have a dough that is the consistency of play dough.  It shouldn’t be sticky to the touch so you may have to add a little more flour until you get the right consistency.

I let my son make the dough and both of the kids created their Valentine’s.  We used simple cookie cutters for most of the hearts.  I tried to make some thumbprint hearts but they didn’t turn out so cute.  They had a lot of fun playing with the dough and my daughter even attempted to eat some of it.  (Don’t worry it’s safe to eat since it’s just flour, salt, and water).  If you plan on using these as a necklace be sure to poke your holes before you bake the hearts, we used a skewer to poke the holes.

Bake:  When you are done creating your Valentine’s you can bake the pieces in a 250°F oven for about 2 hours (or until hard).

Decorate:  We painted our hearts a variety of colors with simple acrylic paint.  I even had some metallic silver paint that I used to try and make a fancy heart necklace.  Once everything was dry we tied on some hemp cording to make them long enough for a necklace.

Give a little love:  Since my kids made these I decided to keep a few for myself.  We also packed up a few for my daughters teachers and my son put one in his backpack for his *special* girl friend in his class.  (Shhh…he’d be so mad if he knew I told anyone that he had a “girl” friend.)

Want some more salt dough inspiration?  I’ve created a salt dough board on Pinterest with some fun projects to create year round.