Handprint Ornament

This week, my little guy and I made a birthday present for his daddy, but it would work great for Christmas gifts for grandparents, too!  

 I found the recipe here.  The salt dough was super easy to make, especially with a stand mixer to do all of the kneeding for me while I cleaned up my kitchen!  I rolled out the dough and initially made it too thick, so I had to start over again and make it thinner - I ended up using the dough rolled about 1/4" thick. 

Unfortunately, I missed the step that said "prick to prevent air bubbles.".   Sooo, when I looked into the oven part way through baking, my ornament was puffed up like a blowfish.  I reached in and poked it with a fork and the bubble settled down.  The end result was that the ornament was a little wrinkly and the handprint is less defined than it was prior to baking, so I will be sure to follow that step next time!  However, I'm still pretty happy with the result!  When I started being inspired by Pinterest Projects, I bought a can of spray-on gloss.  I used it to finish the handprint ornament.

  Making a handprint in dough with a 9 month old is so much easier than using paint - it's ok if his hand moves a little bit, and it's easy to push the hand down deeper into the dough so that the handprint is clearly defined - not so easy with paint!