Valentine Salt Dough Hearts: make this easy salt dough in heart shapes for Valentine's Day. Bake, paint and then give as Valentines or decorate with them.
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My little girls and I decided to make some Valentines salt dough hearts this year. A batch of salt dough was a simple and fun craft to do together, and I love how the cute salt dough hearts turned out. I hadn't made salt dough for years, and actually forgot how easy it was.
There's lots of different things you can do with this salt dough craft. We used our salt dough heart ornaments to decorate for Valentine's Day and make necklaces for classroom Valentine sharing. Another fun idea would be to make a handprint heart as a keepsake. You could add your salt dough ornaments ornaments to a Valentine's day tree. Salt dough handprint ornaments also make a perfect gift as Christmas ornaments for a Christmas tree, or as a great keepsake from small children for Mother's day.
Recipe
Salt Dough Valentines
Ingredients
- 2 cups flour
- 1 cup salt
- 1 cup warm water
Instructions
- Combine 2 cups of flour and 1 cup of salt in a large bowl or stand mixer, and then add in 1 cup of water to the flour mixture and mix to combine into a dough. If the dough is too crumbly, add more slowly add more water.
- Roll out the dough to about ¼ inch thick on a lightly floured surface with a rolling pin, and use cookie cutters to cut them into shapes. Decorate with alphabet letter rubber stamps to add words or initials. Use a straw to cut out a small hole in the top of the heart before baking.
- Bake on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper at 200, for 2 hours until they are dry.
- Once cool, paint desired colour.
Nutrition
Painting Your Baked Salt Dough Valentines
After we made our salt dough recipe and they'd been baked it was time to start painting the different shapes.
The next step after painting the hearts with a base coat of pink or gold acrylic paints, we used a marker to outline our letters and words, then we did a top coat of the glitter. It gave the hearts a great even coat of glitter, and also a nice sheen. I love how they turned out. You could also do a top coat of mod podge to seal them.
Another fun idea would be to make them into salt dough conversation hearts by painting them conversation heart colours and adding messages to the little hearts.
Valentine Necklaces
I was planning all along to use some of the hearts as place card napkin rings for a Valentine's Day table, but once we got started Maddie, my youngest daughter, decided to make Valentine necklaces for everyone in her class. She was so pleased about how they turned out. So sweet. We made a hole with straw in the top of each heart before baking and used a stamp to add their initial to each heart. After they were baked she painted each one and added some baker's twine to turn it into a necklace.
And then she packaged them up for her classmates in little brown paper bags. She had so much fun making these homemade salt dough hearts for all of her friends. She was so proud to hand out her simple crafts on Valentines Day.
Valentine Decor
For our little Valentine's Day table for two, I strung up some of our hearts to create a little bunting and taped it with pretty washi tape. You can string the hearts with a piece of twine, ribbon, or baker's twine.
I wanted to do the table in golds and pinks, so that inspired my choices at the paint colours for my Valentine's decor.
Some of the salt dough Valentine hearts were tied to the back of the chairs. This was a great way to add a little Valentine's touch.
I used some monogrammed hearts for our napkin ring place cards. These turned out so cute.
This was such a simple and sweet craft to do. My girls loved how their special Valentine's table turned out. With a sweet little craft like Valentine salt dough hearts to make together, life really is a party! Happy crafting.
More Valentine Inspiration
You might also like DIY Nail Polish Marbled Hearts here.
Also check out Yarn Hearts here.
You might also enjoy 3D Origami Hearts here.
Miss Merry says
Just adorable! I haven't tried salt dough in forever either. What a great activity for kids. I love the banner and the placesetting markers. I might just try this myself. Your table is just precious. Thank you for sharing it with us.