Salt Dough Handprints for Father's Day!

My sister makes us personalised salt dough christmas decorations and I'd seen on The Imagination Tree some great salt dough projects that looked easy to do so I decided to attempt some handprints as a nice homemade gift for Father's day. We roughly followed these instructions and they were so easy! We will definitely be playing some more with salt dough, it was a great activity.

To make our dough we simply mixed one cup of salt with one cup of plain flour, then added the water little bit by little bit (this was Poppet's job) until the dough was the right consistency. It shouldn't be sticky at all. Once the dough was formed I kneaded it on a floured surface for a few minutes and then let her play with it for a wee while.

Then we broke a chunk off and rolled it out just big enough so it would accommodate Poppet's hand. The first time we tried to imprint her hand into it it didn't work out so well so we rerolled it and the second time she got a good print. I had to really press each of her fingers and palm down into it and keep reminding her not too wiggle her fingers! Then we broke off a smaller piece for Little, rolled that out and then I began the difficult task of getting her handprint. When she was a few months old I tried to get a paint handprint in her baby book but it was impossible, her little fist would not unfurl! This time however, it was not as difficult as I had envisaged, she was quite willing to open out her hand and the problem this time was that she wanted to dig her fingers into it and held on tight! She made a good handprint on her first try, there was only a couple of minor imperfections but that is what makes it even more perfect!

Prints ready to go into the oven

We had a little bit of salt dough left over so I decided to do a Little footprint as well. Poppet clearly felt very left out of the foot-in-dough action and insisted that she do one as well, so I brought out her play dough for some salt dough imaginative play!

She made footprints, handprints, and even put the dough on her little oven tray to cook in her toy oven.

After a couple of hours in the oven at 100ºC the top of the salt dough prints was dry but the bottom was still a bit doughy so I put them back in for another couple of hours. The oven temperature has to be low because you are not baking them, just drying them out and if you use too high a temperature they will start to rise up.

After drying out

We painted them using pearlised acrylic paints, they needed a couple of coats but it went on really easily and was quick to do. We got a box of 6 bottles of paint for about £10 on Amazon and plan to use them lots for more salt dough projects. 

I finished them off by writing the girls names and ages on the back with a permanent marker and now they are all wrapped up ready for them to give to their daddy tomorrow morning along with a bacon roll and a coffee. We might even give him a lie in!

And I have an extra little footprint for me to keep!