Help me save our Christmas salt dough ornaments

[UnsaltedDough]

It is the first time the kids and me have made salt dough. We wanted to make Christmas tree ornaments to give family and friends from the kids. We have spent ages on them but I have made so many mistakes. I'll list to give you a better idea of what is wrong. Please tell me how to fix them:

1. After we made the salt dough and cut out the shapes I didn't put them in the oven. I cooked some of them in the microwave in bursts of 10s and air dried the others for about a week.

1. After a week of air drying they seemed quite hard so we painted them with acrylic paint. We might have used too much paint on some of them.

1. I put them on an oven tray lined with cling film to let them dry but now, a few days later they are sticking to the cling film. I guess the paint was still wet. I can't rekove the cling film without taking off rhe paint. Also most of them have become soft again.

So basically the problem is they are sticking to the cling film and are too soft. I have wrapped some of the cling film around them, which looks ok but not brilliant. What csn I do about the softness? Can I put them ( the ones without cling film at least) into the oven or the microwave to harden or will the acrylic paint peel off or release toxic fumes or something?

Any other ideas? 😞

You can bake acrylic paint.
And salt dough is best baked long on a low temp to dry it out, so baking it might solve both problems.

Microwaving won't harden salt dough - it doesn't need to be cooked as such, it just needs to dry out, best done slowly in a warm place or a very low oven.
If it's thick pieces rather than thin, rolled out like pastry, it can take weeks to dry if you don't put it in the oven (ask me how I know).
If you can't take the cling film off, don't put them in the oven, it will melt.
You could try the airing cupboard , or on top of the radiator, and oven bake the bits without clingfilm.