Salt Dough Heart Magnet & Pin
By: Amanda Formaro
Difficulty: Easy
Age: 5 and up
;)
Salt dough is a really fun medium and you can make so many things from it! Try these adorable salt dough heart magnets and pins to give as gifts.
Be sure to check out our other ideas for Valentine's Day, including more Valentine's crafts.
What you'll need:
- ½ cup salt
- 1 cup flour
- ½ cup water
- Wooden spoon
- Rolling pin
- Extra flour
- Heart-shaped cookie cutters
- Magnets
- Pin backs
- Hot glue
- Acrylic paint (pink, white, red, light blue, yellow, white, pink, silver)
- Pink and orange glitter glue
- Gold glitter paint
- Toothpick
- Paint brush
- Acrylic sealer
- Wax paper
- Cookie sheet
How to make it:
- Preheat the oven to 250 degrees F.
- Mix together, salt, flour, and water until dough is formed.
- Knead the dough on a floured surface until the mixture is elastic and smooth. If dough is too sticky, sprinkle with flour and continue to do so until stickiness is gone. Do not add too much flour as this will dry out the dough and cause it to crack before it's baked.
- Roll out the dough to about ¼" thick with a rolling pin that has been dusted with flour.
- Use different sized heart-shaped cookie cutters to create as many pieces as you like.
- For smaller children, use a single shape to make it easier at painting time. For older children, you can double up and even triple some of the hearts for a 3D affect as we did (see photo).
- Place all hearts onto an ungreased cookie sheet and place into the preheated oven.
- Bake for 2 hours.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool completely.
- Paint with acrylic paints, glitter glue and/or glitter paint and spray finished projects with acrylic sealer.
- To write the words on the conversation heart pins, use a toothpick dipped in white paint.
- Hot glue a round magnet to the back of larger hearts to hang on the fridge, and a pin back to the conversation hearts.
Tips:
- To make 3D polka dots, simply roll salt dough into small ball shapes and place on top of heart before placing into oven.
- Parents should not allow small children to handle a glue gun as burns can occur. Older children should be closely supervised if allowed to handle it themselves.
- Salt dough will not keep for later projects as it gets hard and cracks. Depending on how many hearts you plan to make, you can either halve the recipe or double it.
- You can also incorporate the heart shapes to make animal pins with cute sayings. Example – use a white heart as wings on a pair of bees and write “Be Mine” on them. (See photo.)
