• Before you start your dough, preheat oven to 225 degrees.

Make The Dough

• In a mixer combine flour and salt. (I used the cookie paddles on my mixer to mix. You can also put all the ingredients in a large mixing bow and mix by hand.) Slowly add in the warm water while continuing to mix the flour and salt. Start with 3/4 cup of water and mix.
• Once the dough starts to come together keep mixing for about 3 minutes. If dough is still a little flaky, slowly add in a little more hot water while it’s still mixing till you get more of a thick play dough type of texture.

Time To Roll The Dough & Cut Some Ornaments

• Take the dough out of the mixer and kneed the dough till its pretty smooth.
• Lay down a large piece of parchment paper or Silpat mat and put the dough on top of it. Using your rolling pin, roll the dough until it is about 1/8″ thick. Try to get as close as you can to 1/8″ to help prevent ornaments from cracking or bubbling when baking.
• Now for the fun part! Grab your cookie cutters and cut out some shapes! Keep the cut out parts on the parchment paper. If you are doing a hand print, I recommend doing those first. Place the hand on a large area of the dough. Push the hand and move the fingers side to side to get a deep impression in the dough. After you have made the hand print use a large cookie cutter, or a knife to cut around the shape.
• Once you are done cutting your shapes, remove the excess dough leaving the ornaments on the parchment paper/Silpat.
• With your excess dough, roll it out on another sheet of parchment paper and create more ornaments, or throw the excess dough away.
• Time to make holes for the ornaments to hang. You can use a drinking straw to poke the holes, or a toothpick.

  (You can also use forks/toothpicks to create fun markings/patterns on the ornaments before they are baked.)

Time To Bake

• Transfer your parchment paper/Siplat with ornaments on it to the baking sheet. Put the baking sheet in the oven (at 225 degrees) and set a time for 2 hours. I found cooking at a low heat helps the ornaments to not bubble but takes a lot longer to bake. After 2 hours check the bottom of your ornaments to see if they have been fully baked. If not, add 30 more minutes to the time until they are baked all the way through. The thinner the ornaments, the less bake time. The ornaments are done when the underside of the ornament starts to slightly brown. Baking may take up to 4 hours.

Paint Time

• Let the ornaments completely cool off before decorating. This is the fun part, have a good time! Grab your spray paint and spray the ornaments. Or if you want to do what I did, grab some acrylic paints and paint brushes. Start painting and see what you can create! Just have fun! Toothpicks are a great way to draw little details. Puffy paint and glitter could also be really fun!
• Once the paint is done drying, to help preserve the ornaments; add a layer of mod podge or polyurethane spray. My favorite is the matte mod podge.
• For the final touch, add some twine or a ribbon to your ornaments and hang on the tree! DONE!
• I would love to see your creations you make! Tag me @HangWithTheBangs :) Hope you had fun! Happy holidays!