Content of the article:
An indispensable attribute of the New Year's Eve is a festive Christmas tree, decorated with his own hands. To do this, you can use any options: a garland, tinsel, pendants made of plastic or glass, and, of course, Christmas toys from salt dough.
Salted dough is one of the most accessible and easy-to-use materials used in modern art. From it you can sculpt crafts of any complexity, so it is suitable as a working material for any age category.
How to make a salted dough with your own hands?
The dough recipe is simple, and there are components for its execution in almost any home.
Ingredients Required:
- 2 cups of the simplest, wheat flour;
- 1 cup of fine salt;
- 250 ml of boiled cold water.
All the dry ingredients are mixed together and, after adding water, are kneaded into elastic and soft dough. In the process of cooking, a little vegetable oil is added to the whole mass( a couple of large spoons) so that the cooked dough does not stick to the hands, does not dry out quickly and does not crust while working with it.
How to sculpt toys from dough?
When the dough is ready, you can begin the process of modeling. 
To do this, you need cookies for baking cookies, a rolling pin for rolling dough, a brush if you need to moisten future figures with water to attach accessories, cocktail tubes for piercing holes and all sorts of accessories for decorating. 
Roll out a small layer of the prepared mass and cut, using curly molds, future Christmas decorations from dough. 
Dry the resulting products in an oven preheated to 55-80 ° C, keeping them on a parchment baking sheet for one hour. And after complete drying of the products, proceed to their decoration, using all sorts of materials. 
Salty dough dog souvenir - video
How to decorate dough toys?
There are a huge number of ways to decorate a future toy, and here everything depends only on personal taste preferences and fantasy.
It is possible to use beads for decorating a craft, laying out a certain pattern on a future Christmas toy or filling the entire surface of a product cut out of dough with them. However, in this case it will be impossible to dry the oven in the oven, since the beads will simply melt from the heat. Here you have to use the method of natural drying, leaving the finished work in an open space for 3-4 days.
Instead of beads, you can use cereals of different varieties, shells, seeds, twigs and leaves of trees, dried berries, buttons, as well as glitter or confetti, dried on a toy with glue.
Salty dough crafts decorated with permanent patterns painted by markers look very stylish. To prevent images from being smeared on the dough, fix the markers, drawings or inscriptions with colorless varnish.
mushroom truffle And the easiest way to make the future toy unusual and unique is to put a handprint or feet on your child on it, noting the date of making crafts on it. Such a touching souvenir can even be presented as a gift to grandparents. 
You can use special patterned stamps instead of body parts. Such things are easy to buy in children's stores or in specialized outlets where goods for creativity and handicrafts are sold. Christmas toys made of salt dough with their own hands, made in a similar way, look quite interesting and original.
And for those who are bored of doing simple crafts, you can try to go even further and make a voluminous Christmas tree toy from salt dough, in the form of some animal: a hedgehog, birds or dogs, for example. For this, it is necessary in the future product to first think over its image and structure, then make the main frame of the body, using a ball of paper or foil to fill the inner space of a voluminous toy, and then select and add the missing parts. For example, eyes from beads or a nose from a pompon. Here again there is a lot of room for the realization of creative ideas. 
An owl will be a great decoration for a Christmas tree. 
A finished volume craft should be properly dried in a natural way or using a preheated oven, if not, of course, there are beads or paper in the decoration of a toy, and after decorating and covering the dried product with two layers of colorless varnish so that the toy does not crack and paint on itnot faded from the glow, located next to her, lit garlands. 
DIY hand-made dough toys are not only unusual decorations for a festive Christmas tree, making the main beauty of the holiday unique and beautiful, but also a great way to spend time with your family, which brings together and unites everyone in a single creative process.
