Salt Dough Hearts

I'm lazy trying to introduce a new tradition in our home.  We set up our artificial Christmas tree 3 days before Christmas, and I don't want to take it down now because it's only been what, 2+ weeks? I want more time to admire it!  And it's a lot work putting all that away. So I thought, why not keep it up until...hhrummmm,Valentine's Day?  I'm changing the theme to Hearts, of course. I put away all the ornaments that are too "Christmas-y", leaving only the solid colors that would go with Valentine's Day. Then I made salt dough heart ornaments (this picture is before the glossy spray finish):

Recipe:

1/2 cup salt

1 cup flour

1/2 cup water

Mix the salt and flour together in the mixer bowl. Using a dough hook, slowly add the water in. After a minute or two, take out the dough and knead on a floured surface. It will be dry and crumply but it's ok. You can add droplets of water as you knead. Put a piece of wax or parchment paper on top of the dough, and with a rolling pin, roll it out to about 1/4 - 1/2 inches in thickness.  The wax paper will keep it from sticking to the rolling pin. You can do without the wax paper, and instead flour the rolling pin but adding too much flour will change the dough consistency. Peel the wax paper off and cut out the heart shapes as you would with real cookies. I had the hardest time trying to explain to a 1.5 year old that this salt dough stuff is not cookies [or as the baby says, "toktees?! toktees!"], and they do not taste good. 

Make sure everything is dry - you don't want any stickiness.  Line cookie pan/sheet with wax or parchment paper and place the shapes in.  Don't forget to make holes for the string, and make sure the hole goes all the way through! I used the larger end of a chopstick. Bake at 250 degrees for 2 hours. Let them cool down for a few hours. I needed two batches to get the amount of hearts I made. I had to flip the shapes and poke again to get the holes through: 

Bake and dried:

But there is something extra I did. How I got the swirly pattern on the hearts:

After rolling out the dough, I used Fiskar's texture pattern plate and placed it upside down on top of the dough. The plates are used for embossing papers, but I thought it would work on dough. And it did! I used the rolling pin to roll and "transfer" the pattern on. Then I used the heart cutter to cut out the shapes. And bake.

How I got the words on the hearts:

After rolling out the dough, cut out the heart shapes.  Then I used this letter stamp set I got at Big Lots for $3 on clearance. I simply pressed it each letter onto the dough.  And bake.

After they all dried, I painted them. The small Delta bottles are on sale (as of yesterday, Wednesday Jan. 6th) at Michael's for 89 cents each. I have some regular matte ones, and some "pearl" ones. They have a pretty shimmer finish.  This is the difference between the gold pearl and a regular purple. Both without the glossy finish spray:

Here are the names of them from left to right - Kryon low odor clear finish glossy spray, Delta pearl finish, Delta seashell white, Folkart purple lilac, Delta fuchsia pearl, Delta metallic 14K gold, Delta laguna blue, and Delta rooster red:

For the the white hearts, I painted the pearl finish on top of the seashell white.

After 2 to 3 coats of paint, I got a can of Kron's clear glossy finishing spray ($6.99 - forgot my Michael's 40% off coupon, darn!) and gave them 2 light coats. 

Put string through, hang them on the tree, and...done!

=)