salt dough or clay dough?

[jellyjiggles]

Going to get the kids to make some ornaments for family as presents. We've not done this ever and want to paint/decorate.

What's best salt (wheat flour) or clay (cornflour)

[holeinmyheart]

Have you ever heard of FIMO? It can be bought in ART shops and comes in lovely colours and can be baked hard in a ordinary oven.
You can mould it and decorate it after it has been baked with glitter glue. It is wonderful stuff.
If I was making decorations or small brooches, that is what I would use.

Other than that I would use self hardening clay. Make the model or whatever, let it thoroughly dry out, then paint first with acrylic glue to harden it.( paint both sides and let it dry)

Then paint with acrylic paint, stick on sequins etc and then coat it with acrylic varnish.

[jellyjiggles]

How expensive is it? I'm on a very tight budget this year.

[grassroots]

We have just done some with salt dough and it worked brilliantly. We added a good squidge of PVA glue to the mix, and it all seems to have baked rock hard. Not tried it with cornflour but I am now quite tempted to give it a go as well!

[Passmethecrisps]

I had a practice run with salt dough recently and I was pleased with the outcome.

We used heart shaped cutters and then dd pressed her thumb print into each one.

Half and half salt and flour was my recipe. Splash of water

[Passmethecrisps]

120oC oven for 2 hours as well

[jellyjiggles]

I'm going to try a small amount tomorrow. Has anyone added paint to the mix or am I better painting afterwards?

Why did you add glue? Do I need to?

[grassroots]

Adding paint to the mix works fine - but you probably get a better colour if you paint afterwards. Added the glue because I had to look up how to make the stuff and that was what it said….

[RoganJosh]

We do salt dough every year. I microwave it which mostly works well (one in ten puff up and are a bit ropey).