Give a Hug – Cute Gifts for Kids to Make

I told you we totally and utterly love Salt Dough (and pom pom making) at the moment, both appear to be high on our crafty agenda. During the Summer we made some Salt Dough Shell Pendants (so pretty) and finished Pip Squeak’s pretend salt dough bakery. Today we looking at creating salt dough letters and making a small gift: Give a Hug! Making salt dough letters with kids is a great way to practice their literacy skills (the little ones, will love to “write” their names) and to practice letter formation. I do like, though, when you can have a bit of educational fun, but also make something you can use and give. This “Hug” is also a fridge magnet. Perfect.

Give a Hug – Salt Dough Fridge Magnets – Materials:

• 2 cups of flour
• 1 cup of salt
• UPTO 1 cup of water
• Food colouring or paint (we added a genrous knife tip of good quality food colouring gel)*
• a tray
• a muslin cloth to keep the saltdough damp if working in the Summer and outdoors
• LITTLE MAGNETS

* we love using Sugarflair Food Colouring – get them in US here & in the UK here (affiliate links)

Give a Hug – Salt Dough Fridge Magnets – what we did:

1) Well.. I think that this craft is pretty self explanatory – we formed some letters – make them reasonably wide, so that a magnet fits on the back.

2) Place your magnet on your drying tray – make sure it is the right side down (i.e. the bit attracts the metal, rather than bounces off metal is facing down, we got one of ours wrong.. doh). And gently place your letter over the top and press down. This way you magnet will dry onto your salt dough letter and you won’t have to glue it on afterwards.

3) As with all salt dough, now let it dry. If it is a hot day,  you can pop it in the sunshine, other wise pop into the oven at 50-70C and turn your magnets occassionally to let both sides dry out properly. Take care when touching the magnet itself, you don’t want to burn yourself.

4) As we used coloured salt dough, they are now finished. But if you wish, you can varnish them.